


Lost Kitten

by FrozenDonkeyWheel



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: @TheWholeHale, Abandonment Issues, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Conflict, Cutesy, Derek watches Grey's Anatomy, Derek's Dishes, Domesticity, Fluff, Heart-to-Heart, Kitten, M/M, Oral Sex, Paranoia, Sex, Skype, Top!Stiles, bottom!Derek, brief lydia appearance, cute kitties, domestic fic, i don't know how to tag, internet cult dedicated to Derek's butt, kitten doesn't like derek, kitten sits on derek's head, netflix tampering, nude cooking, public awkwardness, relationship, relationship angst, relationship breakdown maybe, secret twitter account, sterek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-09
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-18 17:15:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1436395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrozenDonkeyWheel/pseuds/FrozenDonkeyWheel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sex is great, they're happy, everything's going just fine. Or is it? Stiles thinks Derek's fading away from him, disappearing from one place only to inevitably materialize somewhere else--with somebody else. So he suggests doing a thing only people in serious relationships do, something to keep Derek grounded:</p><p>He suggests adopting a kitten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Sex Before the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first ever attempt at writing fanfic (nerves nerves omg nerves), and I have no idea who will read, who will like, who will hate etc. etc. but I'm literally obsessed with Stiles and Derek to the point where I live my life vicariously through them, so here I am.
> 
> This is also a work in progress, albeit not a huge one, so I guess I'll be posting updates a few days at a time. The maximum will be a week.
> 
> Lemme know if you have any ideas or feedback or whatever because I am all up for that.

“Holy...Jesus, shit,” Derek breathes, gripping the sides of the pillow, every exiting exhalation of air immediately needing to be replaced by another. “When did you get this...this--”

“Good?” Stiles looks up from the ass-pillow directly in front of his face, his hair sweatily stuck to his forehead, and decides to give Derek a chance to breath before he gives him more. “I’ve always had technique, dude.”

“Not like this. I would know.”

Stiles laughs, runs his finger gently down Derek’s left ass cheek, watches his body semi-convulse in response. “Maybe I’m trying something new.” 

It’s true: he is. He has a mental checklist of things he wants to try, things he wants to do. Things with his fingers, with his tongue, with stuff you can only get from specialists. Things he needs to try, because it's been two years and he’s officially desperate and running out of time until Derek inevitably discovers he can find better elsewhere 

His latest effort involves a game of _giveth and taketh_ , whereby he opens Derek’s rigid ass up just enough to smoothly slide his finger inside and watch Derek feel it, _respond_ to it, writhe and grind against the sticky sheets like he’s in the best kind of pain. But then Stiles takes his finger away, listens to Derek grumble and beg for it again (tonight he even growled), and feels his own dick scream and cry for relief. 

He’s putting himself into the position of power, and he fucking _loves_ it. 

Stiles readies Derek’s ass again, struggling because it’s sweaty and slippery, and gently pushes his finger inside, feeling it tighten around his skin. He bites his lip when he watches Derek breathe and moan into the pillow because hot damn he's enjoying it. But then he takes his finger back out at the height of Derek's euphoria, listens to him sigh again, realizes he has to be careful not to get punched in the dick or something for being a jerk.

“Do you want it again?” Stiles asks jokingly, running his tongue up Derek’s other ass cheek before he gets the chance to respond, wondering in that moment what it would be like to lose all of this, to lose this moment, to lose all these moments, forever.

A sudden bark of “fuck you” from up front brings him back to the true moment.

“Not quite sure I heard that.” Stiles spreads the cheeks apart again and goes to slide his finger in once more. “Might wanna increase the volume. Just a hint.” 

He sees the bottle of lube sitting on the table out of the corner of his eye, but fuck that, they like to be adventurous. 

He tickles around the opening with the tip of his finger, simultaneously running his other hand across Derek’s spine, caressing his vertebrae, laughing as Derek groans and grinds like the air in his lungs will never be enough. “How do you want it?”

“Stiles--”

“Tell me.”

“Please.” Derek squirms again, buries his face into the pillow, silently begs for eruption. 

_“I didn’t hear you saaaaay it_ ,” Stiles sings, the feeling of having Derek at his mercy rapidly becoming the best thing he’s ever felt besides that time on graduation night when Derek took him behind the bushes and basically went down on him whilst people walked by unaware.

It’s usually Derek being Mr. Bossypants in the bedroom but now it’s Stiles’ turn to bring him to the edge, and holy shit he’ll be damned if he doesn’t wanna just go down on Derek right fucking now.

But no, he needs to wait ‘til Derek begs for it so that he knows who’s in charge right now.

Stiles hears a whimper from up front when he jabs at Derek’s opening three times in quick succession, one asshole to another. Derek moans angrily, violently, his legs twisting and shuffling, his disapproval muffled by the pillow. “Do it. Now. I beg, alright? I beg. Just do it. Shit.”

The sound of the great, hulking Derek Hale begging for pleasure from a skinny, scrawny, pale mortal makes Stiles rise taller than the Leaning Tower of Pisa, his dick sticking to the edge of the bed because he can’t stop gyrating against the fabric.

And shit, there’s pre-come _everywhere_. 

He feels it blowing up inside him, then--the great detonation that only Derek can ignite. He knows he has to stop rubbing himself on the sheets because it’s coming--the explosion, the warmth that’s hotter than the Sun. He is _not_ getting off before Derek has given him his reward for being such a beast in the bed. No fucking way. 

Stiles stops for a second, looks around the room, spots a discarded cushion on the ground, and grabs it, puts it between his dick and the bed so that he, too, can muffle his desire. 

Now he's basically humping a cushion, which is even worse, he realizes. So he takes a hold of it in frustration and throws it back across the room, watching curiously as the silvery strand connecting it to his dick disconnects in mid-air before the cushion lands on the floor, definitely heading for the laundry first thing in the morning.

He looks back at Derek’s ass and sees it preparing itself for re-entry, so Stiles gives it exactly what it wants--slowly, quickly, then slowly again. The hot heat of him spreads through Stiles’ finger the second he slides it in. It passes through his fingertip down to his wrist, then to his elbow, before it reaches his heart and splinters into a million directions, travels through every bone until it reaches the only bone that matters. 

Stiles thinks about something for a moment, wonders if he can stretch his limbs to that degree, decides to roll with it and try anyway because he's pumped right now.

He keeps his finger circling inside Derek while he climbs on top of him, lays flat, and lets his dick brush against Derek’s spine while he bites the fuck out of his shoulders and runs his other hand through Derek’s sodden hair, gripping occasionally to the tune of violent moans from beneath him. 

Derek clenches the pillow so hard he tears right through, feathers flying everywhere, but Stiles doesn’t give a shit because this is messy and scorching and _perfect_. 

Derek moans, louder than all the others Stiles has awarded him thus far. So loud it echoes through Stiles' body, making him grow so large it's a miracle he isn't exploding all over Derek's back right now.

Stiles brings his face close to Derek's hair, their bodies squirming against each other, closes his eyes, and feels the satisfaction seize him in the moment, the knowledge that he and Derek are as one, two lost souls finding each other at sea, encapsulating him. 

And for ten seconds, ten glorious seconds of happiness so pure it's as though heaven itself gifted it to them, Stiles forgets everything else.

And then he opens his eyes.

Even with Derek's face hidden from view, Stiles can sense he is ready. 

Stiles takes his finger back, feels it--and the rest of his body--go cold in the air. “Flip over,” he breathes into Derek’s ear, and uses his knees to get himself into a sitting position and then raise himself just high enough for Derek to flip over underneath him and show him his favorite thing in the world. 

Well, his second favorite thing; nobody knows the things Derek can do with his tongue. 

Before Stiles gets to what he’s been waiting for, he sits back down on top of Derek, looks down at him lying there, grinning, and he just wants to suck the goddamn face off of him. So he does, only he gets carried away, bites Derek’s lip too hard and tastes blood on his lips, metallic and _his _.__

“Fucking hell. Keep your fangs to yourself, would you?” Derek complains when Stiles disconnects their lips, nursing the wound with one hand, the other running itself all over Stiles' body.

“Aww, did that hurt?” Stiles teases, suddenly having an idea materialize in his head because he's a freakin' _genius_. “Consider this practice.”

“For what?”

“For when we re-enact True Blood.”

Derek raises an eye at him, bewilderment twinkling in his gaze. “Seriously?”

Stiles smiles, locks his lips with Derek's again, and tastes the blood again he's Eric Northman or something. 

It's definitely kinda gross and he knows he must look like a total weirdo but he's sort of into it at the same time, maybe?

He pulls back, wipes his mouth with his arm, leaving a trail of fading red from his wrist, and stares into Derek's eyes, smirking at him because he has so many sudden ideas for his new concoction. “Seriously,” Stiles replies, then turns himself around, making sure his ass is strategically placed right in front of Derek’s face, and sees it, furious and bulging: the Dark Knight rising. 

Stiles feels Derek inside his ass, face and fingers alike. And good god he feels Derek's tongue working its magic inside him, making circuitous movements again and again, making Stiles wanna detonate like a hand grenade. 

Fuck, he just wants to jerk off right there and then, but he can’t concentrate because he loves the taste of Derek, the heat of him against his lips. Derek’s throbbing so much that Stiles can feel a second heartbeat inside his mouth, pounding against his tongue like an angry drumbeat. It’s the best fucking feeling in the world. 

But it’s never as good as the feeling of catching Derek’s pulsating release, feeling it slithering inside his mouth, his very life-force right there inside him, hot and burning with fire. 

This is what Stiles lives for, what he wants more than anything in the world, but also what he thinks about losing every morning when he wakes up and wonders whether Derek will be there when he rolls over. Because when you’ve climbed so high, when you’re standing on the top of the mountain, the only way forward is backwards. 

And it’s a long, long way back.

Stiles feels it, then. At the worst possible time. Right in his chest.

The hole where his future with Derek should be.

Derek’s still panting into the air, _into his ass_ , when Stiles finishes up and feels the last drop of him moving its way down his throat, using the sheets to wipe the excess away from the corners of his mouth before it dries and keeps his lips together like glue. 

Stiles sits back up, gets out from on top of Derek, their skin not detaching so easily because they've fused together in the heat. He crawls alongside Derek, sits back against the headboard, and feels its frigidity sending a shiver up his spine. Derek sits upright next to him, every inch of his body glistening in the light, a droplet of sweat trickling its way down the side of his face until it finally finds freedom. 

Stiles wants to ask him, right now. He wants to open his mouth again and let all the questions come pouring out. But he can't, because then Derek will realize he's laying in bed next to someone who's neurotic beyond description, and then he'll just run away and find the freedom that _he's_ looking for.

Stiles feels a hand move over to tweak and play with his nipple because Derek has the stamina of a goddamn horse. Stiles loves it--or at least he usually does. But after standing at the summit and seeing all the clouds below him, he doesn’t feel anything anymore. Nothing except the descent.

Which really fucking sucks because he could probably spill enough fluid right now to paint a mural.

Derek finally stops playing with Stiles’ now-hard nipple, catches enough air to speak. “We’re _definitely_ doing that again.”

He doesn’t respond, afraid he’ll do the typical Stiles thing and say the wrong words to pierce Derek’s passion and ruin the best hour they’ve had in freakin’ ages.

Well, almost the best hour until he started thinking again.

He feels a hand move slowly down his body, over his waist, wrapping itself around him, moving up and down like a broken elevator. And then Derek starts to move down the bed beside him, preparing for round two. 

But he can’t. Not tonight. He’s lost the mood. He's lost the chance. 

“I’m kinda beat,” he says while taking Derek’s warm shoulder inside his cold hand and gripping tightly. “Can we do this tomorrow?”

The hand refuses to acknowledge the request like the rest of the body, instead moving to a resting position on Stiles’ thigh. “You all right? You look, I dunno, kinda shellshocked.”

“Dude, I’m great. I just got you to fucking _beg_ for me, so I’m high right now,” Stiles lies, gripping his own hand on top of Derek’s, wanting to feel his heartbeat again but only managing to detect his own inside his chest. After a few seconds he slaps his hand down on top of Derek’s. “Do you want me to turn out the lights?”

He doesn’t look at Derek but he feels the suspicion, the concern, trying to peel away his skin. “You sure? I figured you'd be begging me to go down on you after that,” Derek says.

“I'm not the one who has to beg tonight. Thought that might've been kinda obvious by now.”

“Do you want me to beg?”

“Wow, someone's thirsty tonight.” Stiles considers it for a moment. He wouldn't even have to do anything while Derek does his work... But no, he can't. He isn't feeling it. He doesn't feel anything except his chest weighing heavy. “Look, no. Maybe in the morning? Promise I won't make you beg?”

A brief pause. “All right. But you're making me go to sleep sex deprived," Derek says, smiling. "And just so you know: you owe me."

Stiles feels Derek's lips curling into his own, feels the heat spreading into his brain for a second, before he turns over and watches as everything goes dark. Derek settles in beside him, his arm curling around his waist, his body attaching itself to him. And then when time itself seems to freeze, Stiles stares into the black and feels himself falling off the mountain.


	2. It's Just a Kitten, Dude

Stiles has been awake for over an hour, switching between staring at the wall and the ceiling and then at Derek’s face. He can’t stop _thinking about things_. Things he’d much rather not be thinking about because he’s too young and too big of a goof to think about stuff like this. Or at least that would’ve been true a few years ago, but now he’s twenty and technically an adult, so this is, like, his future. And his classes haven’t resumed yet, so he has all the time in the world to let his mind go to the shitty places, which he hates.

Chief among his thoughts: Derek. Always Derek. Specifically, how he’s going to lose Derek, how he’s going to push him away, how he’s going to say or do something so Stiles-like that it’ll make Derek disgusted and want to leave him, how he’s making Derek so bored there’s no doubt in his mind that he’ll eventually want to fly away and find someone better and cuter and more exciting to do the _thing_ with.

(The _thing_ being this totally amazing sort of ambidextrous move Derek does with both of his hands and his mouth and his dick... _at the same freakin’ time_. Stiles never knows how he manages to do it but it’s, like, every awesome sex move condensed into one.)

But it’s natural, right? You have a good thing, and it feels like it’s never going away, but then it just fades and they go off to college or they straight-up leave you and all you have left is the chalk outline of yourself.

Or something like that.

Stiles sighs under his breath, annoyed with himself for letting this shit run through his inexperienced mind, and rolls over for the twentieth time (he’s been counting), watches Derek’s face as he sleeps, feels his breath hitting the the base of his nose in slow, measured doses.

_One day I’m gonna roll over and he’s not gonna be there. There’ll be a piece of paper on his pillow saying “I tried but it’s not working out. I’m sorry,” or something else totally lame, and then he’ll be gone, forever, and I’ll be here, on my own, again._

But what is he supposed to do, he thinks. He’s tried new things, new moves, _new techniques_ , but Derek always looks uninterested except for when he has something either in his mouth or in his ass. 

And it’s not like he can just ask Derek whether he’s bored and wants to leave him, because he'll freak him out and probably give him the excuse he's looking for to pack a bag and never come back. 

So he’s stuck. Actually stuck. Trapped.

What if he needs to go deeper, do something different that doesn’t involve sex? Yeah, maybe that’s it. Maybe he needs to do _relationship stuff_ instead of _sex stuff_. He wants Derek, needs him in his life. He’s pretty shitty at the deep stuff, he realizes, but he’s not dumb; he knows what makes a good relationship. He’s watched _Parenthood_ and that’s, like, the freakin’ encyclopedia of strong relationships. 

So yeah, he’s got this. 

Stiles runs his finger gently across Derek’s beard because he just loves how it feels like a weird kind of carpet, trying really hard not to wake him up but failing because Derek’s got some kind of hyper-sensitive senses or something. He feels _everything_.

Derek’s momentary grogginess, like he doesn’t know where he is, takes a few seconds to pass, but Stiles loves it, thinks it’s cute, regularly makes fun of it to awake-Derek, much to his chagrin.

“Do you remember your name? Do you know where you are?” Stiles mocks, grinning, deciding to repress the hurt in his heart before it arrests him.

Derek pulls a disgruntled face. “Jerk,” he mumble-groans as he nudges Stiles in the arm. He looks back over his shoulder, checks the time, relaxes when he sees how early it still is, returns to look at Stiles again. “It’s not even seven. Why are you awake? You normally sleep like a sloth.”

Stiles lies flat, looks up at the ceiling. “I dunno, guess I’m just not tired. And I’m not a sloth so, like, fuck you.”

Derek laughs, goes quiet for a minute or two. Stiles wonders if he’s gone back to sleep like a dick so he nudges him in the chest with his elbow, receiving a harder one in return. Then they sort of get into a nudging fight because they're basically children masquerading as adults. “Do you want me to make breakfast while you spruce yourself up and shit?” he asks Derek as soon as they finally stop.

“We can make it together. I don’t need a shower yet.” Derek goes to get up before pausing and turning back around, getting his mouth close to Stiles’ ear. Stiles feels his neck being stabbed by a hundred prickly hairs, fucking loves it, then hears “ _No clothes_ ” being whispered into his ear, before Derek curls his lips around Stiles’ and finally rises out of the bed and heads out of the bedroom, his ass looking _amazing_ in natural light, Stiles notices. 

He notices something else, too, now that everything's bright and illuminated: everything is fucking _disgusting_. The stickiness has dried everywhere, feathers are all over the bed beneath them from Derek's torn pillow, blood all over the linen from Derek's bit lip, and the _smell_ , holy shit. The room literally smells like sex, and Stiles doesn't know whether to be proud or not.

No, he does. He's totally proud. They've painted, like, a masterpiece, and yeah it'll be a bitch to clean up but they did good work last night.

Mini-Stiles twitches at the image of the previous night, and even moreso in anticipation of what it’ll get to do to that ass later, but for now Big-Stiles is back to the thinking. Thinking thinking thinking, until he hears “well are you gonna give me a hand with this or not?” from the kitchen and realizes he’s been thinking for over five minutes, delaying putting on the mask and starting his daily performance.

Derek’s standing at the island, completely naked and cracking eggs into a bowl, by the time Stiles enters the kitchen. 

_Stop looking at the ass, Stiles. Stop looking at it. Look at his shoulders instead. Oh but they’re goddamn built, too. Fuck._

Stiles cuddles in behind Derek when he reaches him, Mini-Stiles forced into a diagonal position against Derek’s ass, and good god does he wish he'd gotten off last night because being in this position against Derek is basically torturous. He doesn't wanna make the kitchen smell like the bedroom because that's just weird, right? 

He wraps his arms around Derek's waist, docks his head on his shoulder, watches him as he cracks another egg and empties its contents into the dish with the rest. “You’re pretty good at cracking stuff. In more ways than one.”

Derek smiles. “That was terrible.”

“Hey, it’s not even seven yet, cut me some slack.” He pulls his arms tighter around Derek, kisses him on the neck so hard he doesn’t realize he’s giving him a hickey. “Oops,” he giggles when he realizes, like some kind of twelve-year-old. 

“Did you just--” Derek drops the egg, grabs his phone from the counter, and uses it as a makeshift mirror. “Ah great, that’s another one the guys at work will rip me a new one over. Can’t you just kiss like a normal person? You always have to suck, I swear to god.”

“You don’t usually complain.”

“Yeah, well, it's kinda ridiculous.”

“You’re such a grumpy grump. _God_.” Stiles releases his arms from Derek’s waist, starts walking around to the other side of the island so he can toast bread or something, catching a glimpse of Derek's eyes trailing his lower half for a split second before the object of his focus disappears behind the island.

Stiles stands there, unsure what to touch, what to say or do, because he's not a functioning adult so he basically has no idea what he’s supposed to be doing to help Derek make whatever the heck he's making.

Well no, that's not technically true; he can sorta do stuff. He made lasagne for Derek a few months back after being issued with a challenge. Okay, maybe it sorta came out of the oven so burned it set off the fire alarm for the whole apartment complex, but he still made it. Nobody said anything about it being edible at the end. 

Fine, whatever, he sucks at culinary stuff, he realizes as he watches Derek doing his thing, but he has other talents to make up for it. He can make amazing playlists for a start, like he's a musical genius or something who can distinguish what someone's looking for before they even ask for it. Oh, and he makes the _best_ gifs. Seriously, that gif he made of Cersei Lannister got nearly 35,000 reblogs on Tumblr. He's fucking _legendary_ and everybody knows it. 

_Pity you're so bad at making people wanna stay with you, eh, Stiles?_

Stiles closes his eyes for a split second to stop himself going to the dark place again, then re-opens them and watches as Derek lifts the final egg out of the carton, taps it against the edge of the dish, and gently pulls the two halves apart to let everything spill out, his concentration attractively unwavering. And Stiles, because he can’t help but compare Derek’s ass to an egg because he’s weird, starts picturing pulling Derek’s ass apart to--

 _No, stop it. Now._

He’s about to ask what he should be helping with because he feels like a dumbass standing there while Derek does all the work, but he looks like he’s already got it in order, which is good because Stiles would probably set fire to the eggs or something, and then it'd be lasagne-gate all over again. 

Stiles watches as Derek tosses the egg carton and heads over to a cupboard, his butt refusing to jiggle even a little as he walks like it's made of stone. He sees Derek grab something from the cupboard, shake it violently into his hand, then cough when whatever it is blows up into his face in a cloud. 

“Hey, you all right?” he asks Derek, who's still coughing as he washes his hands.

“Fine.” He finishes up, splashes water on his face, then dries himself off before turning around and walking back to the island, his friend swaying with each leg movement. “Remind me never to use the pepper shaker again,” he says, somewhat sarcastically.

Stiles loves watching Derek in the kitchen, and not just because he's naked a lot of the time. No, it's because he's always so dedicated, so enthusiastic, and his perfectionism is unrivalled. _Everything_ has to be perfect, else it's discarded, and yeah it sometimes means Stiles has to wait, like, an hour for his food while he listens to Derek voicing complaints to himself and fussing around in the kitchen, but it's worth the wait. Almost.

In fact, while Stiles watches Derek dance from cupboard to cupboard in front of him, his brain totally outdoes itself and comes up with an amazing idea.

“Nude cooking!” he exclaims, as though the thought has automatically burst from his head into the open air like a whale's breath.

Derek turns around, startled. “Huh? What?”

“You. Cooking. In the nude.”

“Yeah, what about it?”

Stiles sighs. “No, I mean we—well, you—should totally make this into a thing. A profitable kind of thing. You get what I'm saying?”

Derek narrows his eyes, looks around the room a little before settling back on Stiles. “I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.”

“Ugh, get with the program already, dude.” Stiles composes himself because he feels like he's on _The Apprentice_ right now. “Okay, picture this: you're here, doing your thang just like right now—“ He gestures around the room with his arms. “—only I'm here with a camera so we can livestream to—“

“No.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Oh come on, it's a freakin' genius idea. We could call it 'Derek's Dishes' or something.”

“Except for the fact nobody wants to watch a guy cooking in the nude online. And they certainly wouldn't pay for it.”

“Of course they would--it's the internet.”

Derek shakes his head vehemently. “It's still a no.”

Stiles doesn't want to relent because he knows how smart he is, how much money they could make from it, but he has to. At least for now. “ _Fine_. But there's a market for this stuff. I would kn—“ _Let's not go there_. “Trust me.”

He swears he sees a brief flash of contemplation spread across Derek's face before it vanishes and he gets back to the food preperation. 

So okay, that's one idea burned to cinders, but he's not done just yet. He needs another idea. Something relationship-y. Something that Derek will really appreciate that makes him see Stiles as worthy of sticking around for. Well, they already live together so that's checked off the list, and they can't exactly have children when neither of them has a uterus. So what else is there?

He's still searching through his brain while he watches Derek (or, more specifically, the rear end of Derek) take the eggs to the counter and start whisking. And just then, he finds what he's looking for. It just appears in his consciousness like he’s in a cartoon and a lightbulb’s appeared above his head. One of those totally random thoughts you get at the weirdest times, like when he was measuring himself one night and finally decided to tell Scott that his tattoo basically sucked ass.

It's definitely a _relationship thing_ , and wow, yeah, it kinda makes sense when he thinks about it. He’s surprised he hasn’t thought of it before.

“Do you think...” He trails off, suddenly reluctant to say it in case Derek doesn’t like it. 

“What?” Derek turns around, whisk and dish in his hand, his brow risen in curiosity, _fully exposed_. 

“No, it’s fine.”

“Stiles.”

“I--” He stands there for a second, contemplative. “I was just thinkin’...we should do something...unusual.” He side-eyes the oven for a second. “Something odd.”

Derek tilts his head slightly like a dog trying to recognize an unfamiliar sound, then puts the eggs back on the counter and walks over to Stiles. “What do you mean?”

 _Oh god, what have I started?_ “Just, like, something we’ve never done before. Either of us.” He sees how Derek is looking at him, how he almost looks amused. “Don’t look at me like that, you dickweed. I know what I’m talking about.”

“No, I’m all ears.” Derek smirks, folding his arms. If there was a douche-o-meter in the room, it would be melting right now. 

Stiles rolls his eyes, thinks about it for a second, wondering if it’s just stupid and whether he should actually go back to bed after all so he can replenish his mental faculties. _Fuck it, I’m just gonna do it._ “We should get a cat. A kitten, actually.” He watches as Derek’s face registers surprise. “What’cha think?”

Derek doesn’t speak for a second, just stands there chewing his lip, then finally says “Why?”

“Okay, I was expecting an outright “hell no” so I guess that worked out better than I thought,” Stiles says, genuinely surprised. “But why not?” He shrugs nonchalantly. “Kittens are fun. It’ll make _you_ fun.”

“No, but I mean...really, why?”

“Jeez, dude, I’m not suggesting we move to freakin’ Berlin, here. It’s just a kitten.” 

A lie: it isn’t just a kitten. Stiles knows there’s more to it. He can’t really explain why, though. He doesn’t even care why, he just knows he wants a kitten. He wants to be _Stiles: The Cat Whisperer_. 

“But you've never shown an interest before,” Derek responds, his face registering obvious intrigue. 

“And?”

“I'm just sayin'. It seems a little...sudden. Weird. And look at this place. Where would it go out?”

Stiles understands what he's saying, but he thinks he can detect a little something extra in Derek's tone. Discouragement, maybe. But he's having none of it. “We can figure all that out later.” He sees Derek's face refuse to relent, so he decides to push harder. “Come _onnn_ , don't you wanna give it a try, at least?”

Derek just stares at him for a little while longer, his face alternately registering surprise and confusion and even amusement, like Stiles is joking, like he’s waiting for the punchline. But then he finally responds when one doesn’t arrive. “Okay then, I guess we’re getting a kitten. Don’t really know why but...okay.” He turns to go back to the eggs before spinning around again. “Just know that if it shits in my sneakers or does _any_ toilet stuff in here, I’ll end you.”

Stiles feels it rushing over him like a wave as Derek goes back to whisking the eggs, flooding through every hole and weakness until it drowns his entire self. It feels like happiness, but that’s too heavy a word. Maybe it’s joy. Maybe it's just a sense of celebration that he convinced Derek to do this. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. Stiles and Derek are gonna be _cat people_.

And that, for some reason, sounds like the best damn thing Stiles has heard in ages.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, so I've really appreciated the kudos and bookmarks that you guys have left so far, so I can only assume I'm doing something well (YAY). But please, if you have any ideas or anything, please feel free to share. I'd love to hear what you think. 
> 
> Also, I expect there'll be around six parts to this fic that I'll post on a regular basis, with ch 3 probably being posted around Tues/Wed of next week. If you wanna bookmark for easy access (and you'll basically be making my night if you do; not even kidding), then, well, DO.


	3. Your Cat-Dar is Terrible

“I still don’t understand why you want a cat,” Derek says as they’re pulling into the parking lot of the animal shelter. It’s been days since Stiles suggested the idea. A week, in fact, and Derek just won’t shut up about it, won’t stop asking why Stiles wants a cat, won’t accept the obligatory “it’s just a cat, get over it” like there’s some sort of conspiracy at work. 

Which there is, really, but it’s the good kind, so why does he have to be so damn suspicious all the time? God. 

Stiles pulls out his phone, decides to make sure he never has to say it again. “Dude, you’ve asked me this, like, a million times. You sure you’re not goin’ deaf or something?” He pokes at Derek’s temple-hair, fiddles with it a little, tries to pluck one out. “Oh look, a grey. Looks like you’re getting old, _old man_.”

Derek pushes his hand away, frowns and pouts in that typical Derek Hale way. “Fuck off, I am _NOT_ going grey.” 

“S'okay, I'll still love you when you're old and mushy and forget where the toilet is.” He pokes at Derek's hair again but sees his head pull away in irritation. “And it's totally fine if you're a silver fox in your twenties. I won't judge.”

Derek looks at him, flames in his eyes, like steam should be bellowing from his ears, so Stiles knows he has to tread carefully or he'll probably turn the car around just to piss him off in equal measure. He holds up his hands in surrender. “Okay okay, you're still Mister Tall, Dark, and Handsome. Sheesh.” He tries to resist getting that final word, but he needs it. “You should _probably_ pull that hair out though.”

The car comes to a halt. Not a smooth halt; more like a quick, annoyed screech that sends them both lurching forwards a little. The engine continues gently rumbling beneath them, giving the silence an aura of unintended menace. 

Derek looks at him, calm etched across his face, but the kind that serial killers have when they're about to murder their victims. “Keep going.” A pause. “No seriously, keep going. I'm gonna _love_ remembering this conversation when we're in bed tonight. You, on the other hand, might not.”

Stiles flashes a goofy downward smile at Derek because he kinda loves it when he gets assertive. And Derek half-smiles back, shakes his head a little, rolls his eyes, the tumultuous air between them fading in an instant. 

Derek turns off the ignition, then, and suddenly notices the phone in Stiles’ hand. “Who you calling?”

Stiles swipes through his phone, being careful to angle it away from Derek’s view because his background is still that candid he took of Derek watering geraniums without any clothes on back in the Spring. He’d withheld sex for two weeks until Stiles pretended to delete it, but Stiles couldn’t do that—he was too proud of his photography skills. 

And also because there's something about Derek taking care of flowers that's given Stiles many, many rounds of enjoyment. 

He’s heading for the voice recording app but gets momentarily distracted by an unread text message from Scott that reads: 

**“yo bro, skype later? like 8 ish? that gd?** ” 

He responds with “ **more like that's fuckin awsoooome** ” in lightning-fast speed because dammit, he has _skills_ , before finally getting to the app. 

“Stiles, what are you—”

Stiles holds his finger up to silence him, hits record with the thumb of his other hand. “I want a cat because, hey, I just want a cat. A cute, fluffy, squishy little asshole. So basically, get over it before you have, like, a stroke.” He stops recording, plays it back while staring at Derek like a cat that’s just found the string, waits for it to finish. “I’m just gonna play this every time you ask so I don’t get laryngitis or, y'know, die.”

Derek shakes his head, starts laughing like an absolute dick. “You do realize we’re getting this cat _right now_ , so that’s basically useless.”

Stiles thinks for a second, realizes he’s right, feels like a complete dumbass, wants to slap Derek in the balls for being smarter than him and having the audacity to rub his face in it. Instead he just sneers at him and punches him in the shoulder. “Don’t gloat, you’ll get wrinkles.”

Derek’s still laughing as he gets out of the car. He even giggles to himself once or twice as they head across the concrete because it's true, Stiles realizes: _once a douchebag, always a douchebag_.

But the best kind of douchebag. The only one he wants to get a cat with because it’s not just a cat. It’s a _thing_ —a thing only people who are serious about each other do. It’s basically like adopting a child, Stiles thinks. Not that he wants a child because he still remembers that time he had to babysit for one of his dad's friends and it was eww, basically, but it’s still a pretty big deal. 

He watches Derek in front of him as they're walking, hears him still laughing because he just can't resist, and suddenly remembers all of the times he used to think he'd be doing this, all of this, with Lydia. He used to dream about having a minimum of three children with her (at least one being some kind of scientific genius), living in a huge house with cars in the driveway, all that typical _life shit_ , but now he's here, with none of that, only Derek.

But it's not compromise. It's weirder than that. It's like he's woken from one dream straight into another. And this one is even better. But then Stiles feels the dread in his gut again, because the thing about dreams is that they're fragile, and even worse, temporary. 

Which is why this is so important, because he can't lose this dream, he can't lose this giant slab of asshole from his life because then he'll go to sleep and wake up in another dream—no, a nightmare—and this whole _Inception_ thing that is his life will basically be over. 

So this kitten they're about to get, this little annoying walking alarm clock, has a lot riding on its tiny kitty shoulders.

Stiles feels it, then, as he’s following Derek through the doors—feels the connection between them, the invisible elastic snapping itself around them, pulling and stretching dangerously wide. 

He feels himself being absorbed into Derek, like sunlight on a flower. 

It feels like photosynthesis. 

They head straight over to the reception because there’s only one other person in the lobby, a young-ish guy with a little black puppy in his arms, which is good because everything is so white, so _clinical_. It reminds Stiles of the several dozen times he made visits to the Beacon Hills Hospital during his high school tenure, of the times he sat by his friends’ beds and worried they’d die and leave him forever, and he’s glad he doesn’t have to be there for longer than what’s necessary because it just creeps him out.

Derek’s busy dealing with stuff at the reception, the boring stuff like paperwork and signing this and signing that, when Stiles spots a vending machine in the corner.

He looks at what’s on offer and finds himself majorly unimpressed because it’s one of those crappy healthy vending machines with apples and yogurt and all the stuff a growing couch slob doesn't need. But he sees they sell orange juice, and it's certainly preferable to this vitamin water shit, so whatever, he'll take it. 

He rummages around for loose change, empties it into the container, and waits for it to—

Yep, great. It gets stuck, trapped on the metal bar, angled towards the glass like it wants to fall but won’t. Stiles taps on the glass, only gently because he's in public, and when that doesn’t work he tries a little harder, maybe shakes the sides a little, wobbles it slightly. But then he remembers that time he literally sent one crashing to the ground at the hospital and decides the bastard thing will just have to keep its precious orange juice. 

He’s walking away, defeated, when the machine starts beeping. A real loud, ear-bleedingly painful beep like a fucking air raid siren. He stands there, mouth agape like an idiot, looking at the machine then at the reception desk then back again, wondering if there’s a way he can pretend it wasn’t him. 

He's about to pretend he's having a heart attack or something because he can't think of anything else when he sees the receptionist hand Derek a bunch of papers and rush over, lifting her glasses to look at Stiles as she approaches, like he’s some kind of criminal charged with trying to steal an orange juice. 

“What happened?” she asks him, fiddling with a panel on the side until it opens up and she finds a way to disable the sound. 

“I dunno, it got stuck. They always get stuck. They—” He kicks the machine just slightly because hey, it deserves it for making him look stupid. _Fucking vending machines_. “Well, they just suck.”

The receptionist frowns at him, purses her lips a little. Stiles frowns back at her like they’re in some sort of contest, until Derek interrupts. “You’ll have to excuse my…him. He doesn’t get out much.” Stiles sees him smile at her before he hooks a finger inside Stiles’ shirt collar and subtly guides him in the opposite direction muttering “Jesus Christ, you always have to go for the vending machines, don’t you?” as they head down the corridor towards the continuous sound of barking dogs in the near distance. 

When they've almost rounded the corner, free from the lobby, Derek finally unhooks his finger from Stiles' collar. “Just once, Stiles. Just once could you not be a public disaster?” he whispers.

Stiles straightens his collar defiantly. “It's not my fault I'm, like, cursed when it comes to electronic stuff. Get off my dick, already,” he whispers back because you never know who's listening. Actually... “And why exactly are we whispering?”

Derek sighs. “I don't know, we just are.” 

“Thanks. Very helpful.That cleared everything _right_ up.”

“Could you just shut up for one second?

“Why, afraid all the kitties will hear us?”

Derek tilts his head his head in Stiles' direction, side-eyes him. “No, because we're nearly there and I'd like to make a good impression, and your mouth kinda gets in the way of that.”

Stiles huffs and puffs but complies because Derek's kinda right, he does open his mouth, like, a _lot_. But hey, it's all he has. _Words are my weapon_ , and all that.

Corridor after corridor passes them by, each sign pointing them in the next direction, white wall after white wall making Stiles feel constricted, until they finally get to where they need to be—the place where all the cats are. 

And there they are, each side of the room packed with small cages, each one housing cats of all sizes, colors, ages, breeds, like some sort of color selection wheel you find at interior decorating stores.

Stiles is busy walking up and down each row, looking in and out of cages, while Derek talks to the guy in charge. He occasionally pokes his finger through the metal squares even though the sign on the wall explicitly states not to do so. But rules shmules, these cats are fucking _adorable_. He can’t resist letting one sniff and occasionally nibble at his finger, consequences be damned. 

Truth be told: he doesn’t know what he’s looking for. You’re supposed to know what kind of pet you want before you take one from the shelter, whether you want one that’s male or female, black or white or both, one that likes children or doesn’t etc. etc. Stiles doesn’t know, doesn’t really care, he just wants one that will make Derek stay. He wants them _all_ because he already feels attached, which is stupid because he can’t take them all, but he really wants to anyway because of the whole _strength in numbers_ concept.

He’s busy letting a tiny ginger-colored kitten curl and wrap its paws around the tip of his wiggling finger when Derek comes up behind him, puts his arm around his shoulder, and follows his lead by giving the kitten a second finger to play with. “The guy says we just have to choose one then we gotta fill out some paperwork.” Derek takes his finger back when the kitten plays a little too rough and draws blood, muttering “You little shit” under his breath. Stiles snorts as Derek puts his finger into his mouth. “Anyway, you seen one you like yet?” he says, the finger still between his lips.

“Not yet. Though this little fella’s excitable. Look at him!” The kitten is ridiculously interested in Stiles’ finger. _You’re not the only one, dude_.

“We’re not getting that one.”

“Why not?”

“‘cause it doesn’t like me. Look.” Derek holds up his finger, shows the small gash running across it, the blood oozing from it. He sucks on it for a second. “We’re not getting one that likes you but not me.”

Stiles laughs. “It’s a cat, Derek. It’ll like anyone that puts a dish in front of its face.”

“No, I can tell it doesn’t like me.” Stiles watches as Derek puts his face near the cage and has to jolt backwards when the kitten pounces at it, stopped only by the cage door. “See? Thing has it in for me already.”

Stiles stifles a burst of laughter, reassuringly pats Derek on the shoulder. “It’s okay, we won’t let any vicious little kitties into the house,” he says slowly, mocking. 

He’s a little upset that he can’t take this one home, but he takes his finger back and carries on walking with Derek along the row of cages, listening to the stream of meows, waiting for one of them to be the rope thrown across the crevice that grips him and pulls him across.

“What about this one?” Derek asks from the other side. Stiles goes over to him, squats beside Derek and looks at a rather large ginger cat lapping water from a dish. “It looks cute.”

Stiles is unimpressed, can quite clearly see this cat isn’t even a kitten. It’s more like six years old, and yeah, he has nothing against middle-aged cats, but he’s looking for something small, something _new_. So yeah, he’s being a little ageist, he realizes, but he has a reason. 

“Seriously? Dude, your cat-dar is terrible.” He stands back up, looks at the small white cat in the cage above, considers it for a moment before he puts his finger through the gap and snatches it back when it hisses at him and tries to eat his hand. “Woah, what’s this guy’s problem? Sheesh.”

“That _guy_ is Sophia,” a voice announces from behind, emanating from the guy in charge. “Her previous owner used to lock her in a cupboard and leave her there for days without any food or water. All she’s ever known is loneliness so she’s not, how can I put this, good around people.”

“Sounds familiar,” Derek mutters from beside him as he tries to get the older, ginger cat to come to the front of the cage. Stiles can see it’s not interested. “What about this one?”

“That’s Arnold. He’s been with us for over a year now, poor guy. He’s what you might consider lazy, doesn’t really do a lot, and naturally that puts people off when they come to look around.”

Stiles sees Derek smirk, makes a mental note not to give him any later so he realizes how much of a jerk he’s been. 

He leaves Derek with Arnold and Sophia for a second to browse the end of that same row--the part he hasn’t checked yet. He sees two brown-white cats fast asleep next to each other in one cage, an extremely vocal black kitten in the one next to it, and about three or four almost identical kittens all walking around in the one below. 

And then he sees it.

In the last cage, right at the end of the row, there’s a tiny little bengal kitten huddled in the darkest corner, staring directly at Stiles when he puts his face close to the metal frame to take a closer look.

He puts his finger through one of the squares, expecting it to come running like all the others (or to try and eat him because he must be like catnip or something). It doesn’t come to him, though. It sits there, still staring, meows just once when Stiles makes a _psst psst_ sound to try and entice it over. 

“This guy,” Stiles says as he steps back from the cage so he doesn’t frighten the poor thing to death with his first-thing-in-the-morning face. “What’s his story? Or her story, whatever.”

The guy grabs a folder from the nearby desk, flicks through a few pages. “Ah yes, that one’s our latest arrival. Came in last week after being found rummaging through a bin outside a convenience store. We really don’t know much about him other than the fact he’s young, has had all his injections, so he must have had a previous owner that either lost or abandoned him. It’s sad, really.”

Stiles takes another look inside the cage and even though it’s kinda dark because the light is on the other side of the room, he can clearly see the black stripes on its head, the streaks of beige and brown and black alongside its body, its green eyes staring right into his brain, trying to decide whether he’s friend or foe. 

“What do you think?” he asks Derek, who's trailing alongside the opposite row of cages, not looking particularly interested, Stiles thinks when he looks over at him.

Derek turns around, comes and looks at the kitten, bending his head around the edge of the cage to get a better look. He shrugs. “I don't know. Do you like it?”

“Maybe?”

“It doesn't look like it likes you.”

“All cats like me. Get with the program.”

Derek shrugs again. _Why is he not interested_? “If this is the one you want we'll take it.”

“Come on, dude. You've gotta have a preference.”

“Cats are cats. I don't care as long as it's clean.”

Stiles looks at him, seriously now. “This is a big thing we're doing, here. Please have an opinion.”

Derek sighs through his nose, looks at the cat for a few seconds, shrugs just a little with one shoulder. “It's...cute?”

“Derek.”

His face has that look all over it, that _I give up_ look. “What, I don't know what else to say. It's just a cat.”

Stiles feels like screaming at Derek for having such a blank expression on his face, for not feeling the excitement in his chest like Stiles does in his, for not appreciating it as much as him because he's really trying here, dammit.

 _I'm trying to save our relationship here. Give me a hand, would you_.

He doesn't know what else to say to ignite his interest, so he continues staring into the kitten’s eyes, contemplating whether this is the one he wants, until it stands up, like it’s awakening from slumber, slowly creeps towards the gate, and sniffs at Stiles’ finger when he puts it through one of the squares again. 

And then he knows. 

“This one. Definitely this one.”

Derek bends his head back around the cage again, sends the poor thing scurrying back to the back of the cage with his looming face. “Why this one?”

Stiles shakes his head because he genuinely doesn't know. It's cute yeah, and it's young and tiny, but it's not just that. It's just...right. “Look at it. It's practically screaming ' _take me home, humans_ '.” 

“Looks kinda timid to me.”

“Yeah well I think you've demonstrated you know nothing about cats.” A pause. “Just ask Arnold over there.”

Stiles feels Derek punch him in the shoulder slightly while he's still looking into the cage. “You're definitely sure about this one?

“I’m sure.” Stiles feels the excitement trying to smash its way out of his ribs. He entwines one of his hands with Derek’s as if it's an automatic reflex, puts all five fingers of his other through the squares on the cage door, waits for the kitten to come back out of the corner. “It’s freakin’ perfect, dude.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so y'all have been great so far with reading this lil ol' fic of mine and leaving kudos and comments and bookmarks and whatever, so if you could keep on doing just that (if you want to, ofc), that will be just perfect. Because seriously, to know that even one person out there actually likes what they've read means literally everything to me, so here, have an invisible internet cookie or something idk it's all I got. 
> 
> Anyway, the end of this chapter marks the halfway mark of this story, and I figure I'll be posting chapter 4 maybe around Friday or Saturday. So keep an eye out, I guess. :)


	4. @TheWholeHale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sooo, chapter 4 already. This is probably the third (fourth?) time I've said this but I'm really appreciative of all the kudos and bookmarks that you guys have left so far. Like, if I could kiss you all I would, whether you liked it or not tbh (you totally would, though). 
> 
> Oh, and please feel free to leave feedback of any kind in the comments. I'll respond to anything and everything and I'm always curious to hear people's thoughts. Always. 
> 
> I'm not entirely sure when I'll get around to posting chapter 5. I would say probably around Wednesday/Thursday of next week, or earlier if I have time. So keep an eye out.

It’s just approaching eight o’clock and Stiles is _exhausted_ , just wants to go to bed and sleep until the freakin’ winter solstice, which is, like, three months away. First they had to get the kitten from the shelter, then they had to get it checked out by the vet, then buy a whole bunch of stuff to thoroughly cat-proof their apartment, and now here he is, not-very-patiently waiting for Scott to appear on Skype so he can talk to his bro face-to-face for the first time in months. 

He’s just not cut out for having to do stuff, he realizes, as though he hasn’t actually known it since he started walking half a year later than all the other kids because he couldn’t be bothered.

Stiles is slouching on the sofa, the laptop balancing precariously on one of his knees, his phone on the other, the TV remote to his left, a bowl of Doritos to his right, because there’s one thing Stiles needs in his life and that’s convenience. 

He plays footsie with himself for a little while, bored, until one of his sneakers slips over the ankle and he decides to have done with it and toss them both across the room using his feet. Derek won't like his shoes just laying in the middle of the room, Stiles realizes, because he's, like, obsessed with keeping stuff tidy, but whatever—he'll deal with the consequences later. 

He stares at the laptop screen, waiting for the little orange box to appear in the corner, getting distracted by both the TV playing _Judge Judy_ (he was channel surfing and his finger may have accidentally defied his mind, okay?), and the kitten that’s still too afraid to come out from behind the shoebox that’s tucked away underneath the table in the corner. 

It keeps looking at him—always looking, like it wants to come out but can’t. But it’s gonna have to when Scott comes on Skype, Stiles thinks, because he needs his bro to know he’s gotten a cat with Derek, that he’s taken a step further in adulthood, because he, like, needs personal validation and shit.

A part of him also wants to unburden himself on Scott, tell him _why_ they actually have a cat, tell him everything, but Derek's invited himself into the plan so that's not gonna happen.

And plus it wouldn't be fair to Scott anyway, to spend the entirety of their first face-to-face conversation in months complaining about his life. Then he'd be a shitty friend as well as a shitty boyfriend, and the last thing he needs is Scott wanting to get even further away from him, too, because then he would literally have nothing. 

He stares at the kitten again, envying the little asshole because he doesn't know how lucky he is, getting to sit there in the shadows away from everything and everyone, only coming out for food and urinary activities. 

He makes the _psst psst_ sound that worked for him at the shelter, but it doesn’t work this time. It just stares at him, simultaneously mocking and whimpering. So Stiles grabs a Dorito, leans forward, holds it just above the floor like some kind of bait before he realizes that kittens don’t eat stuff like this and feels like an idiot for not even understanding feline dietary habits.

The laptop slips from his knee for just a second, and Stiles has to perform some kind of ninja jujitsu move to prevent it from crashing to the floor and ending, like, his entire existence because he spends half his life on the internet. 

Well, on Reddit and Twitter, specifically, because the world fucking deserves to know his views on male butts and world issues and cat memes.

So okay, he may have a twitter account called @TheWholeHale, dedicated entirely to giving periodic reviews—sometimes with candids—of Derek’s butt, and it may have amassed nearly ten thousand followers and gotten its own tag on Tumblr, and he may or may not have opened a Paypal account for the more enthusiastic fans, but Stiles does important stuff on the net, too. 

Kinda. 

He's suddenly reminded of the candid he took a few days ago but hasn't yet posted. He snapped a picture of Derek laying on the sofa in the nude whilst watching _Grey's Anatomy_. He'd been super stealthy and taken the perfect butt pic, and Derek hadn't even noticed because he was too engrossed by Izzie Stevens almost dying on the operating table. Stiles had deliberately timed it so the tension in Derek's butt would match that of the scene he was watching, making it look goddamn _flawless_ and making Stiles grow so hard he thought he was gonna poke through his shorts. 

He looks at the picture again and yeah, he's pretty darn proud of this shot and cyber space deserves to see it. So he grabs his phone, swipes up and down, left and right until he finds it, puts it into a tweet, types “ **Tense as a tightrope, 9/10, so warm you could sleep on it, would recommend #HoleInTheHale** ” and hits sends, feeling giddy that he’s created an entire internet community dedicated to Derek’s butt. 

Which isn't surprising, really, because that butt is a fucking _masterpiece_. Van Gogh couldn't have painted a better-looking work of art if he'd tried. 

“He still not online yet?” Derek’s voice announcing itself from behind him makes Stiles jump, his phone leaving his hands and falling into the bowl of Doritos, which almost goes flying across the room to hit Judy in the face because Stiles' arms don't deal well with being startled.

“Holy shit, dude, quit creepin'.” 

“Sorry. Force of habit.”

He composes himself, tries to downplay the fact he flailed like a little girl. “Good. Just, like announce yourself when you enter a room so you don't kill anyone of a nervous disposition. Like me, for example. Don't kill me, Derek.”

Stiles hears a laugh from behind him. “I'll try. Can't promise anything, though.” Derek comes around the corner of the sofa, stops at the end with his hand resting against the cushion. “So is he online yet?

“You know Scott, he’s only ever on time when—” He realizes where his sentence is going, shudders, shakes his head, decides to scrub the image from his mind’s eye because holy god he’s not here for that. “No, he's not.”

Stiles remembers his phone's currently sleeping with the Doritos, so he grabs the bowl, locates it, frees it from the cheesy prison. Not only is his phone still displaying the picture of Derek's ass but it's also coated in cheese dust, which is fucking disgusting. He brushes it with his sleeve then hits the power button, quickly buries it under the cushion before Derek realizes what he’s been up to for the last six months and goes mad. “You wanna sit down?” he finally asks Derek, who looks lost, just standing there.

“You sure you can make room? I wouldn’t wanna disrupt your _comfortability_ ,” he replies, definitely sarcastically. 

“ _Ha ha_. It’s tempting to make you sit on the floor but I’ll be nice.” He shifts the bowl to the other side of him, dropping a Dorito on the laptop as it passes over. 

Derek sits down next to him, reaches across to grab the TV remote like he wants to change the channel until Stiles slaps his hand away, because while he’s in the room he’s in charge of the TV. End of discussion. 

“Are you serious? _This_ is what you want to watch?” Derek asks, and even though Stiles is trying to clean nacho dust off the keyboard with his sleeve, he can still feel the incredulity in Derek’s stare. 

“Dude, don’t make me force you to watch New Girl.” Stiles knows Derek hates the show, doesn’t like watching “a bunch of idiots doing idiot things,” so he always uses the threat of putting that on the TV to silence him. “Anyway, you’d like this. She's just like you.”

“If you let me change it I’ll do something for you later,” Derek replies, the undertone clear in his voice. 

Stiles snorts. “You’re gonna do that anyway because you can’t _wait_ to get at all this. So I guess we’re at an impast.”

“An impasse.”

“Yeah.”

“No, you said ‘impast’ when it’s 'impasse',” Derek says, rolling his eyes in clear view.

“Dude, whatever. Are you a dictionary, now?” Stiles replies, tossing a Dorito at him, watching it bounce off of his chest and leave an orange imprint behind on the white fabric, obviously infuriating its owner.

Derek sighs as he tries to brush away the cheese particles, then out of the corner of his eye, Stiles sees him look around the room like people do when they’re bored and looking for something to jump out and excite them again. Bored of what, though? The TV? Probably. But what if he’s bored of other stuff, too? What if he’s trying to think of an excuse to go out so he can pick up a guy in some club to go home—

_Stop it_.

But what if he’s just never gonna be interested again, Stiles wonders. He had hoped getting a cat, doing a thing couples only do when they’re serious, would maybe ground Derek, make him never want to leave. But what if he’s just deluding himself?

_Seriously, stop it_. 

God, he hates feeling like this, like he’s untethered to the ground, floating away. 

Stiles is about to give in and pass the remote to Derek so his brain doesn’t keep thinking, wondering, worrying about what the other brain sat beside him may or may not be thinking, but Derek speaks before he gets there. “Has it come out yet, from under there?”

“The cat?” He sees Derek nod. “Not yet.”

“Should it have by now?”

“I dunno, I’m not the cat whisperer.” Stiles wishes he were but he’s not. “The guy said it would probably take some time for it to get adjusted and stuff, so.”

“Yeah, but...when?”

“Dude, I _dunno_. He’ll come out when he needs to eat or pee in your shoes or something.”

Derek stares at him, his brow in furious disapproval mode. “Don’t even joke about that. I mean it, if this thing does any peeing or crapping or anything in here, I’ll be coming for you.”

Stiles bites his lips to avoid laughing, says “Totally wrong choice of words, there.”

Derek doesn’t get the chance to respond before Stiles hears his phone bleeping. Once, then silence, then twice, three times, four, five, six seven eight, all within milliseconds of each other. He remembers, then, that he's stupidly left his Twitter notifications enabled and people are clearly discovering the latest glowing review. 

“There's no way those are all texts,” Derek says from beside him. “You been posting shit on Tumblr again?”

“Yep, that...must be it,” he replies as he fumbles his way to his phone before it explodes from the audio assault. As soon as he's found it, he heads into Twitter, disables all the notifications, manages to sneak a peek at his stats so far and sees “ **121 retweets, 214 favorites** ”. Damn he’s pleased with himself. He changes the subject quickly. “If Scott doesn’t come on Skype in the next five minutes I swear to god I’ll block his ass.”

And just then, like Scott had been listening from across the void, waiting for a mention of his name to time this just perfectly, his name appears in the corner of the screen. 

Stiles immediately makes the call because Scott has a habit of signing in and out about fifty freakin’ times because his net sucks or something. 

He answers instantly. 

“He...e...ey Sti...les,” Scott says, his voice sounding electronic and fragmented, his hand doing some weird wave to the camera which really doesn’t work out the way it’s intended because he’s moving in almost stop-motion.

“You’re lagging, bro. Oh my god, seriously, you need better net.”

Scott freezes for a moment, maybe disconnected, until it picks up again a few seconds later and everything seems smooth at last. 

Stiles feels Derek’s head move a little to the left so Scott can see him, instead of just, you know, asking for the laptop to be moved across so they’re both in-frame. 

“ _Dereeeeek_!” Scott says excitedly. “Stiles didn't tell me you were gonna be here too.”

“Thought I'd join in with you guys seeing as we haven't talked in forever,” Derek replies, sounding genuinely excited in a way Stiles hasn't heard for a while. 

Stiles doesn't know what to say that won't make him sound like he doesn't want Derek to be there, because he does, really, and he likes that Derek _wants_ to be there, but at the same time he's sort of annoyed. So instead of saying something stupid, he goes for a false “Surprise!” and realizes that he's just said the dumbest thing anyway and wants to be swallowed by the sofa cushions before he makes it worse.

“So what's up? You guys good?” Scott asks, leaning back into his chair.

“Yeah, we’re good.” _Ha, no we’re not. Maybe. Probably. Shut up, brain_. “What about you? You haven’t skyped me in ages, bro. I was worried you’d taken a trip to Belize or something.” Stiles knows Scott’s been watching _Breaking Bad_. He’s had, like, a thousand texts in all-caps expressing every possible human emotion. If he doesn’t get the reference then he’s basically a dumbass. “Seriously, we've gotta skype more. I need to know _everything_ about your life, basically. Just thought you should know that.”

Scott smiles. “I know, I know. I’m just so busy with—” Stiles watches him grab a book off-camera, show it up to the screen too quickly for him to read the cover, and flick through the pages with disinterest. “—with this. And Kira. Basically everything. Life’s hard, man.”

“If you’re telling me we’re not talking as much because of a freakin’ girl then I’m gonna personally come over there to kick your ass, capiche?” Stiles means it. The _bro code_ is everything. It’s their version of the constitution, and you don’t break the constitution. 

Scott grins, holds his hands up like he’s surrendering. “Okay okay, we’ll have to set aside some time every week for this. I dunno, Sunday night? If either of us breaks the agreement then we get whooped by the other. Agreed?”

Stiles sits up a little, clears his throat, puts on his very best Walter White voice. “ _You’re goddamn right_.”

Scott winces a little. “That was kinda terrible, man, but props for effort and all.”

Stiles relaxes back into the cushions, feeling offended that his impersonation wasn't as good as it sounded in his mind. “But yeah, seriously, bro, it's weird not knowing everything you're doing. You gotta tell me more. And I don't just mean when you're watching Breaking Bad.”

Scott looks weird. Almost...sad, maybe? “I know. It's just...it's still weird not having you, like, attached to my hip, you know?”

“Hey, I was never _attached_ to you,” Stiles responds, which isn't really what he wants to say but what he _has_ to say because the alternative would lead to stuff for which neither of them is prepared. And definitely not with Derek sitting right there. 

“You kinda were, though.” Scott argues, taking a sip from what looks like a water bottle.

“He's right—you two were inseparable. There were rumors about you,” Derek interrupts, surprising Stiles because for a second he'd sorta forgotten he was even there. 

“What? What rumors?” Stiles asks.

“You know, that you and Scott were... _you know_.”

Stiles looks at Derek with narrowed eyes because he's literally dumbfounded by the words coming out of his mouth. “No, I don't know, hence why I'm asking.” He looks at the screen, at Scott. “Do you know what he's talking about?”

Scott just shakes his head, so Stiles looks back at Derek, his eyes demanding answers.

“A few people used to think you and Scott were...together.”

Stiles turns his nose up what Derek's just said because it's fucking weird. People used to think he and Scott were _together_? Yeah, they were pretty close, and they always hung around with each other, but they were _bros_. What the fuck?

“Ugh dude, why'd you tell me that?” he says to Derek, shaking his head like it's gonna dislodge the invading imagery from his mind. 

“Well, you asked.”

“That's just all kinds of wrong on so many levels. You've basically just told me my entire high school life was a lie.”

Derek opens his mouth to respond but before he gets the chance, Scott finally interjects. “ _Ohhhhhhh_ ,” he says, smiling, nodding, before his eyebrows curl into a frown, the smile disappearing, delayed realization spreading across his face. “Wait, what?”

“Could you keep up for one second, bro? Seriously. People thought we were dating, all right? That's the story. Feast your frickin' eyes on it.”

Awkward silence spreads across the room. Stiles doesn't know what to say because he's still surprised. Okay, so he _kinda_ understands how people could've come to that conclusion, but he was always so worried people would figure out he was into Derek, that Derek himself would figure it out. He never thought for one second that people would think he was into _Scott_ , because they were just best friends. And Scott always had a girlfriend, so how could people have been so stupid?

He's really weirded out by it, he realizes, so he pretty much decides never to discuss it again. It'll henceforth be a banned topic of conversation. No exceptions. It's just too weird.

The silence persists for another minute or so, with the only voice in the room being that of the TV as Judy berates some guy for asking his friend to borrow her car and refusing to pay the repair costs after he totalled it. 

Or something like that; Stiles hasn’t been focusing.

No, instead Stiles is thinking again, feeling it in the pit of his stomach. For a second there it almost felt like they were back at high school where everything was relatively easy, where he didn't have to worry about all of the true monsters in life. And now he's back to reality where everything he wants from life is sitting in this very room with him, yet it's all so far away. 

He feels the distance between him and Scott, now—more than he’s ever felt it before, and he’s had it loads of times so he can draw comparison. Scott's basically his _brother from another mother_ , but now they're just bookends at the opposite ends of a shelf. 

And he misses him. Like, misses him a fuckton. They shared everything together, knew everything about each other. And now that’s gone, like it was never even there in the first place, and it's maybe happening again, just like it did with Lydia, with Allison, with all the others, and Stiles doesn't know how to stop it.

And he hates it, hates himself for leaving Beacon Hills, hates Derek for leaving with him instead of forcing him to stay, hates how people always want to leave him like he's the wrong end of a magnet pushing everything away.

Stiles wants to, right there and then. He wants to shut the laptop lid, jump into the car and drive somewhere quiet, some place where he can just stand in the rain and have it rinse awayall of the rot that’s making his brain feel heavy. 

He can’t do that, though, because it’s not even raining. So instead he tries something else. Tries to _understand his emotions_ , because he remembers reading somewhere once that ‘the key to overcoming your emotions, the key to a better life, is to first understand what you need to face’. It sounds like bullshit, though, because how are you supposed to overcome several thousand miles of invisible distance just by thinking about it? 

It takes him a second to realize he completely spaced out for a moment and now Derek’s telling Scott all about how “work’s going great” and _blah blah blah_ and then “we should come up there sometime” and about—

“What?” Stiles asks, suddenly, like an automatic reflex. 

Derek's startled by Stiles' sudden outburst. “What do you think? We haven’t had a vacation in a while. I could take a week off in summer when you don’t have class?”

Stiles doesn’t know whether to smile, laugh, cry, or be mad that it’s like Derek was reading his thoughts. So instead of saying something dumb like before, he decides to act by doing the first two simultaneously, then grabs Derek’s face with both of his hands, pulls him in, pushes their lips together, cements his gratitude in the only way he knows how. 

And for those few seconds while they're connected, sharing a voice, it feels like the world is revolving around them. But it's not. It's frozen, just like he is, and it's dizzying in its own weird sort of way. 

“Wow, okay, wasn’t expecting that,” Stiles hears from his left as he guides his head back from Derek’s and sees the look of bewilderment on Derek’s face. 

“What was that for?” Derek asks. 

“Just...” He stares into Derek's eyes, looking for something, though he doesn't know what, only that he doesn't find it. “...just for being you, I guess.”

Derek's face looks kinda inquisitive, like he's about to ask what's wrong, which would be a disaster because Stiles is in the perfect mood to tell him just that. Thankfully he doesn't. Instead he smiles in this reassuring way that looks kinda weird, says “You're not gettin' sentimental on me, are you?"

Stiles tuts, says "You wish, dude,” then goes to punch Derek in the balls, but only as a joke because he happens to be quite fond of them in pristine condition.

"Guys, not to disturb _the moment_ , but there's kind of a cat behind you."

Stiles is still staring at Derek, and he's still staring back at him, and Stiles is trying real hard not to picture Derek fading away in front of him like a hologram, before he registers Scott’s words and turns to see—yep, there _is_ a cat behind them. 

“When did you come out, little guy?” Stiles says softly so he doesn’t freak the poor thing out. It meows, leans forward to sniff at his hair, tries to chew the end of a strand before he clasps it in both hands and brings it to his chest, snuggles his face into its _ridiculously_ soft fur, forgetting the weight of the world as he hears its heartbeat against his cheek.

“When the fuck did you get a cat?” Scott asks, completely dumbstruck, it seems. 

“Today. Like, literally today. This is actually the first time it’s come out from the corner.” Stiles tickles behind its ear, listens to it purr. “ Maybe you should add 'kitty homing beacon' to your resume.”

“Bro, you never told me you were getting a cat and we text each other all the time. What gives?”

“Yeah, Stiles, _what gives_?” Derek interrupts, clearly trying to sneak an opportunity to uncover the truth behind the whole cat conspiracy. 

“I’m telling you now! And you—” He sets the cat down between them on the sofa, twists his head towards Derek. “—well you can just...shut up.”

“Real mature.”

Stiles opens his mouth, hovers for a second or two, looking for a riposte. He doesn’t find one, so “shut up” is all he can muster.

“I can’t believe you guys actually have a cat. That’s just...weird.”

“Listen, Scott, this is what adults do. Y’know, actual adults, not overgrown teenagers. You’ll know what I mean eventually.” A pause. “Well, maybe.” Stiles knows he's being kinda hypocritical because he's not exactly an exemplary adult either, but Scott doesn't know that. _And that's the problem_.

Scott doesn’t say anything for a few seconds because hey, Stiles knows how to put people in their place, dammit. Instead he takes another sip from his water bottle before eventually coming back to the conversation. “So what’s his name?”

“Whose name?”

“The cat, duh.”

And then it hits Stiles that nope, they haven’t actually named the little guy yet. _Idiots_. Both of them, idiots. They’ve had the thing for like, six hours, and neither of them thought to actually discuss its name. 

_Idiots_. 

Stiles side-eyes Derek, sees him do the same, shrugs his shoulders because honestly he has no idea. He’s pretty useless with names. He’d probably just name it Mister Kittypants or something if it were entirely his choice. 

Wait a minute: does Mister Kittypants work? Well, it’s cute, adorable, sufficiently kitten-like. Maybe—

“I was thinking perhaps something like Tiger? Or Bruiser?” Derek says, who’s clearly been thinking about it to himself without telling Stiles because he’s an asshole who doesn’t share things. 

“Dude, we are _not_ calling him Bruiser. That’s, like, a drug dealer name.” Stiles tickles maybe-Mister Kittypants’ belly, watches as he wraps his paws around his wrist, nibbles at his fingers. “Does he look like a drug dealer to you?”

“Well what do you suggest then, genius?”

“I’ve got an idea,” Scott announces from the computer. “Maybe _Catlinski_? 'cause, you know, he’s a cat and—”

“No.” He and Derek both say it at the same time because if there’s one thing they’re on the same page about, it’s that Scott can’t name shit. 

“Well I thought it was good but whatever.”

“Yeah, no, bro. Seriously, just...no.”

Stiles thinks about it some more, starts feeling pretty confident about Mister Kittypants because it sounds like some kind of superhero name that Marvel could make movies out of and stuff. He decides to put it forward. “I like Mister Kittypants.”

Derek scoffs, shakes his head vehemently. “Definitely not.”

“Why? It’s a cool name.”

“Because it’s dumb.”

Stiles disagrees so much, doesn’t trust Derek’s judgement, especially after his previous suggestions. Nope, Stiles is way too invested in this name now. He _needs_ it. Nothing else will suffice.

“We _are_ gonna call him Mister Kittypants. Your opinion is irrelevant, to be honest.”

“Stiles, you can’t just—”

“Kittypants.”

“But what—”

“Kittypants.”

Derek sighs. “Would you just—”

Stiles holds up his finger to silence him. “Guess what?”

Derek chews his lip, asks “ _What_?” like he's asking through his teeth.

“It begins with K, ends with pants.” So maybe he's being a little immature, he thinks as he watches Derek shake his head and stare blackly at the TV. But it's important to him that they get it right, that they don't mess it up straight away by giving him a lame name like Bruiser, and Derek should understand that, right?

“Are you guys about to have a domestic or something? Because I’m still he—” Scott stops mid-sentence, goes quiet for a few seconds before his video chat freezes and goes black.

“Bro, your fucking internet again,” Stiles says, annoyed, to a black box before Scott disconnects from the chat.

Stiles sighs, closes Skype while he waits for him to reconnect because sometimes Scott is literally the worst, looks around for the cat— _Mister Kittypants_ —and sees it standing up against Derek’s chest, sniffing his beard, trying to nibble it which Derek does not look happy about. 

“Looks like you’ve made a friend there, dude.”

Derek picks the cat up, holds it in front of his face for a few seconds then sets it down on the sofa when it tries to grab his nose with its paws. “There’s still no way in hell we’re calling him Mister Kittypants,” he says, somewhat angrily, before he gets up and heads to the kitchen without even looking at him, like he's pissed, maybe. 

Stiles doesn't even respond as he watches Derek walk away from him. Because he can't tell if Derek's annoyed at him, whether he's pissed, or whether he's just grumpy over the cat-naming thing. Sometimes it's a little hard to tell with Derek because he sort of has one facial expression for all three emotions. 

Stiles watches Derek disappear around the corner then slumps back into the sofa, a little surprised, if he's being honest. He doesn't really understand why Derek's angry, if that's the case. And he can't think of any reason for him to be mad except for the disagreement over what to name the cat. But Derek doesn't seem like the sort of person to get mad over what to name a cat—especially one he hasn't exactly shown much interest in anyway.

But what else could it be?

Fuck it, he's just gonna ask him outright, he thinks. So he follows him into the kitchen, comes up behind Derek while he's clanging bottles around in the fridge, the veins in his arms flexing with every movement.

He contemplates staying silent and withdrawing back to the sofa, because if there's one thing he's learned over the years it's that conflict is best dealt with by ignoring it and waiting for it to go away by itself. But he can't. Not when it could erode everything he has. 

“Are you pissed?” he asks, watching as Derek jumps a little at his voice. _Now he knows what it feels like_. 

Derek spins around, a bottle in one of his hands. Well if he isn't annoyed, his face is certainly showing the opposite, Stiles thinks, because to say he's scowling would be an understatement. “What?” he responds, gruffly, agitated.

“Are you pissed at me?”

“What do _you_ think?”

Stiles shrugs. “I dunno, that's why I'm asking.”

Derek sort of rolls his eyes a little then turns around to bury himself back inside the fridge. 

The lack of words sends a jolt of something through Stiles from the heart downwards. “Well?” he asks.

Derek doesn't say anything, just continues moving items around in the fridge. 

“Derek?”

He slams the door a little too forcefully, barks “What do you want, Stiles? I'm not okay, _okay_?” as he's walking over to the island, still refusing to look at Stiles, the tension in the room heavy and smothering like a dense mist. 

“Well...can't we talk about it? Kinda like to know what I've done.”

Derek sighs impatiently. “I'm not getting into this right now.”

Stiles leaves a few seconds before he says anything more. “But we kinda—“

“Look, just leave it, okay? We'll talk about it, just...not now.”

Stiles opens his mouth to say more, but then he hovers like he's trying to catch flies, the words trapped in his throat. He wants to understand what he's done to make Derek so annoyed that he can't even look at him, can't even talk to him, but it's not a good idea, he realizes. 

So he slinks away, defeated, and plops himself back down onto the sofa. Mister Kittypants comes over instantly to greet him, pushing his furry little head into Stiles' chin, meowing and purring, before he hears a noise from the kitchen and sprints away from him like the Flash in kitty form. 

And then Stiles is sat alone. Scott's disappeared, Derek's disappearing, and as he stares at the TV, the voices going through him like he's an illusion, only one sound registers:

The sound of the silence around him.


	5. The Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so first thing's first, this is the obligatory 'thank you to you and to you and you sitting over there etc. etc' because really, every new reader or kudos or bookmark or comment means absolutely everything to me and makes me feel validated. YOU GUYS ROCK.
> 
> Secondly, I can't believe this I've managed to get to the penultimate chapter in such a short space of time. And by roughly Saturday/Sunday, I'll have the final chapter posted and then this will be my first ever completed work!! :)
> 
> And now you can read on.

“Stiles, the Netflix isn't working!” he hears from the living room as he’s just finishing up in the shower, the kitten scratching at the door from the outside because all it's taken is a week of residency at Chez Stilinski for him to have grown very confident. 

“STILES!”

“Dude, I’m in the freakin’ shower, god,” he shouts back over the last surge of water, steps out, feels the cold of the air wrap around him like a sheet before he dries himself off and gets dressed. Well, half-dressed, because yep, he forgot to bring a shirt into the bathroom with him. He had a nightmare like this, once. One where he was back at high school and Jackson stole his clothes while he was in the shower and—

“STILES!”

“Oh my fucking god, you are so impatient.” Stiles chucks the towel he was using into the grossly overstuffed laundry basket before realizing he needs to face the wrath of the Hale. 

And when he says wrath, that's exactly what he means. Because even though winter invaded a week ago and turned the air between them to floating frost, since Stiles did something stupid of which he's still not entirely sure, things still aren't the same. It's like they're both being held hostage at the edge of a blade, and any slight misstep will get them cut. 

Stiles has tried to open the dialogue with Derek, to get him to speak the words that are sat behind his teeth, but he won't. And maybe he's kinda glad for that, because if they're not in the air then they can't cut the cords holding him upright. 

But in the air or not, they're still there, and they're not going away.

He wipes the condensation off the bathroom mirror, looks at himself, envisioning a cartoon angel and devil sitting upon his shoulders, whispering contradicting truths in his ear. And then he watches as a cartoon anvil falls from up high and crushes him to human paper. 

He stares at himself for a second or two longer, then gathers himself up, and heads out of the bathroom.

He's immediately ambushed by both cats. 

“The Netflix isn’t working. I’m trying to sign in but it says the password’s wrong,” Derek says, rather agitated, and he does a double-take when he looks up at Stiles, who's suddenly feeling super uncomfortable about being nude from the waist up. “Why are you—“

“Forgot my shirt.”

“Oh. Well...you should—“ Derek's eyes dart around the room before he sees the remote in his hand again. He holds his arm outstretched, awkwardness dancing around him like smoke. “Whatever. Here, you try it. It's not working for me.”

Stiles takes the remote, brushes his hand against Derek's for a split second and feels the warmth pass through him like an electric shock. Or maybe it's not warmth. Maybe it's the heat of scalding ice. He really can't tell anymore.

He types in the password, but it's futile, because he knows exactly why the password won't work. 

Because he changed it. 

He had to do something, anything to finally get the whole kitty naming situation to come to an end. He's not gonna budge, and Derek doesn't even want to discuss it, so the little guy's been running around for a week being called 'Kitty Witty', and after Stiles used it last night, it sorta responded to it, which is mortifying. 

He is _not_ gonna be a shitty pet owner. No fucking way.

So now he has to resort to _Persuasion: The Stiles Stilinski Way_. And maybe it's douchebaggy, but it's a measure of last resort. 

He tries it again with the expectation of failure. “Maybe it's down?” he says to Derek when he hands the remote back to him and feels it being snatched out of his hand. 

“Well it's not 'cause I checked. I'm not stupid.” Derek freezes, sighs, stares at him with narrowed eyes. “Is this you?”

Stiles tries real hard to stifle a laugh he feels bubbling beneath his tongue, and surprisingly it works. “Is what me?”

“Don't act dumb, you know what I mean.” He folds his arms, the remote poking out from underneath his armpit, his accusatory eyes fixated on him. “This has your asshole fingerprints all over it.”

Stiles flops down onto one of the cold leather chairs and really regrets not putting on some clothes before doing so because all that shower warmth has well and truly left his body. He raps his fingers playfully across the arm. “I have _no_ idea what you're talking about.”

Derek continues staring at him, definitely unimpressed, his gaze feeling like a stream of needles surging through his body. Then he shakes his head, just a little but enough for Stiles to see it and feel it reverberating through the air. “What did you do? Did you change the password?”

“ _Maybe_ ,” he replies teasingly, like a child who's hidden Derek's favorite toy and has no intention of telling him where it is. 

“Don’t fuck around, Stiles. You know I wanted to watch Grey’s tonight. All night. Change it back.”

“Nooope.”

Derek looks perplexed, his brow curling into a confused frown, like he doesn’t understand why he’s being subjected to this new brand of forceful bribery. “Why?”

Stiles feels the touch of exquisite, luxuriously soft fur brushing against his leg. So he leans forward, picks the cat up, and cradles it in his arms, which he's come to learn the cat doesnt appreciate if the several dozen healing scratches on his arms are any indication. “Because a certain somebody, _hint hint_ , needs a certain name,” he says while burying his neck into the cat's fur, simultaneously staring up at Derek with the stretch of a wry smile spread wide across his face. 

“Are you fucking serious?” 

“I’m as serious as, I dunno, cancer. Point is I’m serious. And so’s Mister Kittypants, here.” Stiles pulls the kitten up in front of his face, says “ _I’m vewy vewy sewious_ ” in a high-pitched emulatory voice, lets him go on the ground so he can, yep, go and stand up against Derek’s leg like the giant kiss-ass he is. “See? He’s being nicer about it but he wants it too. Look at him.”

Derek sighs through his nose while the cat circles itself around Derek's ankles, occasionally trying to brush the top of its head against his skin, stopping to sink its teeth into anything it can manage to grab a hold of, because this guy _loves_ biting stuff. “This is a whole new level of assholery even for you.”

Stiles sighs, feels the smile on his face disappear because he just wants this to be over. “Come on, dude, think about it. We've gotta choose a name at some point.”

“'Choose' implies that anyone except you has an opinion. A _relevant opinion_ , right?” 

There's something about the way Derek's talking now that makes Stiles feel uncomfortable, like maybe him changing the Netflix password was a mistake, like those unspoken words habitating within Derek's mouth are finally making an attempt at moving to pastures new. 

And maybe that's a good thing...

But it's not. It's never a good thing. Stiles can't deal with conflict, especially when he knows full well that at the end of it it he could be left without anything.

Stiles sits upright in the chair, no longer feeling the urgent need to display such provocative self-satisfaction with every muscle in his face. No, now he needs to placate the situation, calm the oncoming storm. “Look, Derek, you have a choice, you kn—”

“Oh really?” A rush of air exits Derek's lungs, like a fake laugh. “Well in that case, I don't wanna name that cat Mister...Kitty...whatever. That's not the name I want, okay?” Stiles suddenly sees the remote being tossed to him and like a flash of lightning he catches it before it hits him in his chest. “So that's my opinion. Guess you can put the password back now, then, huh?”

Stiles sits still with the remote in his hand, his legs crossed on the chair, contemplating what the heck he should do next. His heart is beating so fast he wonders if Derek can see it pulsating beneath his skin from where he's standing, threatening to burst out and land at his feet so he can stomp on it and shower the room with his soul. 

He still doesn't know what to do but he knows he can't stay quiet. He looks at the remote, and without thinking tosses it onto the sofa away from them both. “Look, I—“

Derek claps his hands together just once, then laughs—not repressed or falsely, but instead drained of everything that makes laughter what it is. “That's what I thought.” He makes a beeline for the kitchen, shaking his head all the while, pure scorn painted across the canvas of his tired-looking face. He stops right before he rounds the corner into the next room, turns to stare right at Stiles. “Do you want a beer?”

Stiles looks up from the ground at Derek, his eyes squinting ever so slightly. And he's about to respond, naïvely hoping that the tension in the air has just been sucked out of the room leaving a vacuum in its absence, before Derek side-eyes something at the other end of the room, says “Oh wait, better tell me what kind you want first because apparently I'm not allowed my own opinions.” 

And then he slinks around the corner out of sight, and Stiles feels his brain swimming inside its suit. 

He fidgets in the chair as he listens to the sound of running water in the kitchen. His right leg's crossed over the left, but then he switches them over, then back again until it gets annoying and he puts both of his feet back onto the ground and feels the comforting presence of solidity beneath his soles.

And all the while his heart's still beating— _pounding_ —as if to the tune of a bassy, bombastic melody. Because that frost that was in the air? It's not frost anymore; it's water pouring down on top of them, saturating them both with liquid lies. 

Stiles absent-mindedly runs his palm over his stomach and realizes that yep, he's still clothes-less. And there's a reason he doesn't make a habit of sitting around without clothes on, because it makes him feel exposed, naked, like anyone can come along and pry him open to see what's stuffed inside. 

Without thinking he jumps up and scurries into the bedroom, away from Derek and away from the choking air. 

He yanks the wardrobe door wide open, finds nothing but endless different shades of plaid. _Why do I wear so much of this shit? It's boring, Stiles. Jesus fucking Christ_. 

Stiles runs his finger gently across the rack before he lands on a plain red t-shirt and decides that's all he needs to cover himself up, to cover his porous outer shell so nothing can get in.

He's about to pull the door back open to go back into the living room and back to the conversation he knows he's about to have. But he pauses for a second with his hand clutching the handle, twisted downwards but refusing to pull. Everything he has, everything he needs, is literally on the verge of slipping through his fingers, and it's all his fault. He's caused it all. It's his inability to function like an adult that's caused Derek's boredom. It's his stupid fucking dumb insistence on giving the cat he wanted such a ridiculous, childish name that's brought them both to this point. And suddenly he realizes why Derek didn't like the name, because it _is_ stupid. 

He's probably given Derek the excuse he needs to leave him. And the best part? The cat Stiles wanted, the cat he thought would give Derek an excuse to stay, is gonna be the thing that sends him away. 

Stiles clenches his unused fist so tight his entire hand shakes with the strength. Then he closes his eyes, just for a second, and makes a wish in his head, as though a birthday cake were in front of him and he'd just blown out the candles. 

He wishes that Scott were here.

He finally pulls the door open and goes cold at the sight of Derek grabbing his jacket from the closet. 

“What—where are you going?” He asks shakily across the room, walking so fast he accidentally nudges the cat with his foot and sends it scurrying to...wherever it goes.

Derek doesn't respond, just slips one arm through his jacket and then the other until it covers him. 

He tries again. “Where are you—“

“It's better if I'm somewhere else right now, Stiles. For you and for me.”

Stiles actually flails on the spot, his hands rubbing together in front of him in uncontrollable, automatic motions, the weight of his body balancing on one leg and then the next and then back again. He can't help it. 

And for some reason he feels so hot, so sweaty, and he has to resist the urge to rip the fresh red fabric off his body quicker than he'd put it on.

And it's like he can't _breathe_ , as though his lungs are filled with sand.

He can't help it when he reaches out to grab Derek's arm, either, pulling it towards him without caring whether it's given consent. “Don't go. Please. We need to talk, that's all.”

Derek doesn't yank his arm back like Stiles expects. Instead he turns to face him, his head slightly tilted, his eyes looking almost uncaring. “You don't get it, do you?”

“Get what?”

“There _is_ no talking to you. There's this whole—“ He waves his free hand in Stiles direction. “—wall thing around you, and I can't get past it. You're impossible.”

Stiles lets go of Derek's arm, hoping beyond measure that he won't have to resort to, like, jumping on top of Derek to stop him from leaving. Because if that's the only option he has left, he'll do it. He'll damn well do it. Desperate or not, he'll leapfrog the fuck out of Derek.

“Dude, there's no wall. Just sit down, talk to me.” He has an idea. “Look, we won't call the kitten Mis—it doesn't matter. Pick a name and it's done.”

“Stiles—“

“Just pick a name right now and that's it, I won't complain, I swear. And I'll set the password back,” Stiles says hurriedly because he's afraid if he stops for breath Derek will seize the moment. “I'll quit bein' a dick, okay?”

Derek looks up at the ceiling, shakes his head, runs the tip of his tongue along his lip just once. Then he looks back at Stiles, his eyes telling a story Stiles knows he doesn't wanna hear. “It's not just that, Stiles. It's...it's _you_.” He pauses for a moment, and he sees Derek clench his jaw. “I just can't be around you right now.”

Stiles feels his eyes becoming moist, threatening to create a river down his face. But he can't. At least not yet. 

Derek closes his eyes and sighs intensely at the same time, then stares directly at Stiles, his hand fumbling in his pocket for something. He turns towards the door, but freezes mid-motion, says “Boyd” calmly, like nothing is even wrong.

Stiles is still struggling to resist the overwhelming urge to erupt into a volcanic explosion of tears when he registers what Derek's just said, faintly asks “what?” through a hoarse voice.

Derek turns back around, keys in his hand. “That's what I wanted to call it. Boyd.”

“Well why—“ Stiles clears his throat before it chokes him, subtly brings his hand up to scratch at his nose and wipe away a tear crawling down his face. “Why didn't you just say it, dude?”

Derek looks at him for a second, motionless, speechless, his eyes feeling cold on Stiles' skin, before the faint beginnings of a tight-lipped smile grow across his lips. “It's not about that.” His jaw slips to the side for an instant, then snaps back into position. “Well, it is, but it's not.” A pause. “You never asked me. You never wanted to ask me. You wouldn't have listened if you had.”

Stiles' lip trembles and his hands start rubbing together again. He can't say anything. Stiles Stilinski, the master of the common tongue, has literally no words to say that won't either A, make things worse, or B, make them better. 

It doesn't happen often, but he's speechless. Because Derek's right, and Stiles knows he's right. 

Derek's still hovering between Stiles and the door like he's at the centre of a tug of war. And there's no way Stiles has the strength to win. “You said it yourself: my opinions aren't relevant. _I'm_ not relevant,” Derek says, like every word is difficult for him to part with. 

“Dude, you _know_ I didn't mean that.”

“But you did, though. You wanted a cat, so we got a cat. You wanted that name, and you didn't even consider for one second what I wanted. And you never do. It's always you, and it's never me.” He finally steps back towards the door, reaching his hand out behind him until it reaches the handle. “And I'm sorry but—I can't.” He glances at the ground then back at Stiles, and Stiles sees the sadness glinting in Derek's eyes like light reflecting off the surface of water. And then in one swift movement he pulls the door open, steps outside, and disappears.

Sadness washes over Stiles like a breeze, envelops him, makes him wish he were made of dust so that he could be carried away and scattered to the wind. 

He stares blankly at the door for a second, which becomes a minute, then two, maybe five, before he realizes that no, Derek isn't gonna come back through it. He's walked away, and he's gonna keep walking until he's far enough away from him, and then he'll continue because it still won't be far enough.

It's finally happened. Derek's gone, probably for good, and if this isn't the worst thing Stiles has ever felt in his entire life then he doesn't know what is.

He drags himself over to the sofa, his legs aching from bearing the weight of him, and falls face-down onto the cushions. Half of his body is still hanging over the edge, so he crawls on top, his arms flat by his side, and lays his head to the side, stares at the TV that's still displaying the Netflix screen like it's deliberately mocking him. 

And then the river starts flowing, silently but viciously, until it drowns him.


	6. Three Days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is the final chapter so I guess I can tick that 'completed work' box and ugh I thought I was ready but I'm kinda not. 
> 
> But anyway, this has been far, far more awesome than I expected it to be. Sharing my work, not feeling intense worry and dread over people reading it (well, except for the first time), obsessively checking my stats to see who's read it and left feedback of whatever kind. 
> 
> And I'll definitely be doing it again. I dunno when, but I have ideas circling in my mind right now and at some point they'll become words and this will all start over. Hopefully you guys will not forget me when that happens. 
> 
> And this is sorta becoming an emotional awards acceptance speech kind of thing so I'm just gonna shut up now and let you read the damn thing.

Three days. 

Turns out that everything can fall down around you in just three days. Everything you have, _everyone_ you have, can just run away from you and leave you still standing at the starting line. And Stiles knows this better than anyone, because it's been three long, miserable days since Derek walked through that front door, and three days since he hasn't walked back through it with a goofy grin etched across his face to erase all the shit that hangs in the air between them. 

On the first day post-Derek, Stiles lay on the sofa, staring at the door like a cat waiting for its owner to return. But he didn't return. He didn't call, he didn't burst back through ready to embrace him in open arms. There was only one knock, and Stiles had been so fucking thrilled that he'd tripped over himself and crash-landed on his knee in his mad dash to yank the door wide open for Derek, only to discover the owner of the knock was a neighbor inquiring about...whatever; Stiles wasn't even listening to her, too blinded by the double dose of agony.

On the second day post-Derek, the door-watching became less, but the reality sank in. The reality that Derek was _gone_ , was _never coming back_ , that Stiles was all alone with nobody to talk to except for this furry little jerk who had come into their life and ripped it apart when he was supposed to do the opposite. But it wasn't his fault. Stiles knew that. And he was the only thing he had to stop him from literally going insane. He was the only thing Stiles had to quell the tears that wouldn't stop flowing from his eyes no matter how hard he tried to squeeze them shut to cinch the well at the source. 

And on day three of Stiles' post-Derek world, the realization is finally here. Maybe it's the _acceptance_ period in whatever stage of grief he's supposed to be at now. Not that it's any easier. Not that his bloodshot eyes or two-day-old shirt or furry teeth are any more accepting of this bullshit than the rest of him is. But maybe he's getting used to it now—getting used to the fact that Derek is gone. Not just gone with the expectation of return, but _gone-gone_. 

Stiles rolls over in bed, sees that it's past noon and that he's missed his first class of the semester, but he doesn't care. What difference would it have made if he'd gone anyway? He'd have spent the majority of the time pulling his phone out and staring at the black screen, waiting and waiting for it to light up with Derek's voice calling out to him. 

No, he has a better idea. 

He begrudgingly crawls out of the bed, smells the stale, unkempt stench of himself as he does so and vows to finally take a shower before he attracts flies. But before that, he grabs his laptop off the floor, takes it into the living room, sets it down on the table in the centre. Then he finds the playlist he created yesterday, the one he'd named 'self-pity central' and filled with dozens upon dozens of angsty songs he knew would twang his emotions like the strings on a harp, and sets it to play, the volume turned up to full so he can hear it throughout the whole apartment. 

He hears _Wires_ by Athlete while he's finally in the shower, taking weird comfort in his inability to distinguish which water is coming from his eyes and which is coming from the shower.

He hears _Collide_ by Howie Day while he's haphazardly creating a sandwich out of stale bread and chicken he knows has been sitting in the fridge for much longer than recommended. 

And then while he's trying to call Derek for the forty-second time since he left (yes, he's been counting, making sure he doesn't exceed his self-imposed limit of ten times per hour), his personal favorite— _How to Save a Life_ by The Fray—makes an appearance, sending him spiralling down yet another tunnel of despair where the only thing waiting for him at the end is the endless black of nothing. 

As expected Derek doesn't answer. It just rings and rings and rings into empty air until his voice finally appears, but his voicemail voice, because that's all Stiles can reach right now. 

Annoyed and maybe a little pissed at Derek for not even taking his calls, he throws his phone onto the chair opposite him and lays on the sofa again, staring up at the ceiling, the silence broken only by the sound of Mister Kittypants playing with something in the bedroom.

He feels it all swimming in his head. The knowledge that _he_ caused all of this. He crossed the line between lovable asshole and total jerk. He was selfish and uncaring and the worst thing of all was that it took the sight of Derek's back as he walked away from him for Stiles to finally realize all of this. 

_Have I always been this way_? he thinks, a tear or five racing down his face. At what point did he become an adult, the kind of adult who ruins everything, without him even noticing? And wait, if he's always been such a jerk, then why the heck would Derek put up with him and do _the thing_ to him, like, every night without deciding he could get better elsewhere?

And then he feels it, gripping him tightly, like the hugs Derek used to give him after a shitty day:

Loneliness. 

Stiles sighs and forces himself to get up off the sofa. He picks his phone back up, sees Derek watering geraniums in the background and stares for a weighted second before he ignores it and heads to his contacts and finds Scott's name. He needs his bro, even if he's miles and miles away. He needs to hear his voice telling him it'll be okay and that Derek will come back and then they'll live happily ever after or some other unrealistic fairytale crap. He doesn't even need to believe it, he just needs to hear it. 

But then the ringing goes on and on until Stiles realizes Scott's not gonna pick up either, because he's left Stiles as well, even if it is in a different way.

Defeated and uninterested, Stiles heads back to the bathroom, almost tripping over the kitten as he goes. 

He brings cold water up to his face to clean away the dried tears glued to his skin, then catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and stares. And suddenly he's noticing it all: that weird upturn in the middle of his hairline, his pale skin, his messy hair, his intruding stubble, and good god his _moles_. It's all so hideous, he thinks. No wonder Derek left him. Derek, with his unfairly huge biceps, and his ridiculous chest, and his evenly layered beard that always seems to maintain a perfect length. 

No, Derek was never going to settle for someone so...so... _average_. 

Stiles stares at himself some more, spotting every single imperfection he's somehow glossed over for the last twenty years, wanting to dig his fingernails into his skin and peel it all away, before the breakdown he has been forcing back finally arrives with the power of an army behind it to smash down the wall keeping it at bay. 

Stiles sits back against the bath, his knees up to his chest, his arms wrapped around his legs and his face buried in his thighs, every violent sob shaking his skeleton. But then, in between the cries and his misty vision as he looks up towards to the living room, he hears it. Faintly, almost indistinguishable, but still there. 

His phone is ringing. 

Stiles jumps up so quickly his socks slide on the bathroom floor and he crashes down onto his knee again. He curses the universe for being such a dick but ignores the pain to drag himself up and to his phone, because it could be him.

But when he gets there and sees Lydia's name on the screen, the hope and eager anticipation of a child awaiting Christmas morning drains from his eyes and pools around his ankles. 

He answers anyway because even though it's not Derek or Scott or even his dad, it's still someone to talk to.

“Hey,” he says, flatly and uninterested.

“Hey to you too, Mr. Monotone.” 

Stiles curls his mouth at the corner, just a little, but not enough to have any effect. “You called me in the early afternoon, what else do you expect?”

Lydia sighs on the other end. “Has anyone ever told you your telephone manner sucks? Or that you have the general conversation skills of an infant?

Even though Stiles has missed Lydia, because who wouldn't miss her, let's be real, he's not really in the mood for her brand of sarcasm. Not today, anyway. “Is there something you want or do you just wanna berate me? I'd kinda like to get to it if that's the case.”

“Don't be a grouch, Stiles, it's unbecoming of you.” She pauses for a second, and Stiles can practically sense the hesitation in her voice. “Listen, there is...something.”

Stiles slumps down on the floor, his back to the sofa, his knees up to his chest again. _Holy sweet jesus this hurts_. He absent-mindedly massages his free palm into the ache, then decides to get to it because Lydia's sudden silence isn't exactly making him feel better. “Well, what is it?”

“It's a little awkward.”

“What, more awkward than this conversation?” Stiles can hear the irritation in his own voice, and Lydia's gotta be able to hear it too because she's definitely not an idiot. And normally he would care, but not now. 

“Not as awkward as it'll be when I hang up on you.”

“Look, could you just say whatever it is you wa—“

“Derek's here.”

Stiles sits up suddenly at the mention of his name. “Wh—what?” he asks, tripping over his own words the same way he tripped over his own feet not moments ago. 

“He's here, and he's stinking up my couch, and I love you guys and all but if you don't come to fix whatever it is you did wrong, then friend or not I'm gonna throw him out on the street.” She pauses for a moment, then in a slightly lowered, frustrated voice, says “I'm serious, Stiles. I am _not_ gonna clean up your unshaven, perspiring mess for you.”

“What do you mean he's there? Why?”

“I don't know. I don't care. Just get over here and fix it, because if you think I'm gonna deal with another night of a grown man whining about you then you're very mistaken.”

Stiles doesn't know what burst of knowledge is more difficult to comprehend: that he knows where Derek is; that he's crashing with Lydia of all people; or that there's apparently a chance for him to fix what he did wrong. How could he fix it? It's his stupid mouth and ugly face and dumb brain that got him into this mess in the first place. What exactly is he supposed to fix it with?

Lydia's voice interrupts his racing mind. “Are you there?”

“I'm here.”

Neither of them says anything for a second or ten, before Lydia severs the silence, her voice more mellow this time. “Listen, Stiles, whatever it is you did, you can fix it.”

“How do you know that?” he responds, choking on the tears he's refusing to let loose.

“Because I know _you_. That's how I know.”

A tear manages to break through his defence. He brings up his free arm to wipe it away, doesn't say anything in response because he has too many words whirl-winding in his brain for anything coherent to break through.

“Just get here tonight. Fix it. Take him home with you.” She pauses for a second, probably expecting him to respond but all he can muster is a quiet sniffle, then says “I'll see you later” and disconnects. 

And yep, Stiles is crying again, because to hell with holding it back. He doesn't even know what he's crying over, whether it's because Derek's gone or because he has the chance to maybe bring him back. 

He drags himself up off the floor, pain soaring through him from the knee-up, then decides to finally make himself look less homeless and more appealing to the eye. 

Because he has no idea how he's gonna do it, or if he even can, but he's gonna try to get Derek back. 

He's gonna try. 

~~~~~~~

Stiles has been standing outside of Lydia's apartment for at least ten minutes. Actually no, that's a gross underestimation. More like half an hour. Maybe even an hour. When you're stood in one spot feeling a tornado of thoughts turn everything to wreckage inside your head, it's hard to keep track of the time. 

Because Stiles really wants to head inside to reassemble the pieces of broken person he shattered himself into when he made Derek leave, but at the same time he's thinking about the chance of it not going his way, of Derek being too mad to speak to him now or ever. And the last thing he wants is more conflict with Derek.

Stiles shuffles his feet awkwardly against the pavement, leans back against the wall and stares into the distance at a row of houses, some small, some large, some with lit windows casting tendrils of light into the darkness of the night, and some black as coal. There's probably a cute family behind some of those doors, he thinks. Couples in love with each other, children running around making noise and drawing doodles on the walls with crayons like asshole kids usually do. And maybe they have kittens as well—kittens that brought them together, took the family unit they had and glued it together so it could never fall apart. 

And then he wonders why it didn't work for him when he tried it, or if it's ever going to work. And better yet, whom it's going to work with because if Derek casts him aside like a used rag when he eventually stops dancing around the inevitability of him going up to that front door, then Stiles will be alone, probably forever, and there's no way—

“Are you going to stand here all night?”

Stiles is startled by the sudden outburst of sound from behind him. He clumsily jumps up, spins around quickly, his hands semi-outstretched in front of him as though he needs to protect himself from whatever danger lurks near. When he sees Lydia standing there in fabulous red evening wear, he relaxes. “How did you know I was here?”

“Well you're not exactly concealing yourself, are you?”

Stiles bites the corner of his lip for a moment. “You could've said something earlier instead of leaving me here like a dumbass.”

A sudden smile flashes across Lydia's face, the vibrant red of her lips piercing the dark veil around them. “Where would the fun be in that?” She steps down the final two steps as a cab approaches the front of the house and stops in front of them both. She's in the middle of getting into the back-seat before she turns back to face him. “I'm not going to be back until at least ten, maybe twelve if I see something I fancy, so just...figure it out before then. And he knows you're here.” She gets into the seat, says “Oh, and Stiles?”

“Yeah?”

“You owe me. Big time. And I _will_ collect.” 

The car door slams shut and he watches as Lydia disappears into the distance and out of sight. 

And then he's composing himself, using whatever scant light he can find to check his hair in the reflection on his phone screen, feels every blood cell in his body vibrating with panic, and steps up to the front door. 

His knuckles don't even reach the material before it opens and Derek's standing there, wearing the same jeans he wore when he left but a plain-white shirt rolled up at the sleeves instead of the green v-neck. And his beard looks...awful. Like genuinely awful, all overgrown and homeless and if Derek were in his right frame of mind right now, Stiles is sure he would be revolted by how he looks. 

They stare at each other for a while, the seconds turning into a minute, before Stiles decides to break the ice. “Can we talk?”

Derek doesn't say anything, just shrugs and walks back down the corridor and into another room, leaving the door open for Stiles to come through. _Well at least he didn't slam it in my face. Progress!_

Stiles follows Derek into the other room, shutting the door behind him, wondering if this is what it felt like for Derek when he did the same thing days ago. 

When he finds Derek again, he sees him sat in a cream-colored leather chair, staring at the television, not at it but rather through it, he notices. And he doesn't say a word, doesn't even look in Stiles' direction or acknowledge that he's there, so Stiles follows his own initiative and sits down on the sofa, his hands curled around each other in between his thighs. 

And then the quiet sets in. The awkward, interminable quiet broken only by the gunfire and yelling from whatever crappy movie Derek's burying himself in. 

Stiles doesn't know what to say, if he should even say anything, whether any of this is a good idea and if he should just get up and leave before he makes it worse. But no, going back to that apartment without Derek, going back to that kind of silence...he can't do that. 

“Derek, can we—“

“Talk. Yeah, you said that already.” Derek grabs the remote from beside him, spins it around so it's facing the right direction then switches the screen off. And now he's looking right at Stiles, his eyes bulging with an amalgamation of irritation, disappointment, and anger.

It's sort of uncomfortable being this close to Derek and feeling the venom in his eyes, but Stiles knows he deserves it, and after all, it's nothing compared to what it's like back home without Derek there. 

He looks down at his hands, sees his fingers automatically gliding in between each other again, then looks back up into Derek's eyes. “I know you're mad at me.”

Derek's brow rises, settles in a heightened position. “You think? What could _possibly_ have made you think that?”

“Ah, sarcasm. Guess I deserved that.” Stiles shuffles uncomfortably in his seat, struggling to find a posture that doesn't make him ache all over. “Guess I deserve all of this. I was a jerk to you, I know that.”

“A jerk?” Derek asks, a burst of laughter emerging into the air concurrently.

“Yeah.”

He laughs some more. 

“Dude, what's funny?”

“What isn't funny about this? About me being here, sleeping on Lydia's couch. Lydia, of all people. And you, sitting there telling me it's because you were a _jerk_.” Derek's not laughing anymore. He's not even smiling. In fact his face is more pissed than Stiles has seen it in a long time. 

Stiles is confused. “Well that _is_ why you're here, so I dunno what's funny about it.”

Derek's shaking his head now, and Stiles can sense it's not going very well. “ And yet you still don't get it.” He's fiddling with a loose thread of cotton or whatever on the arm of the chair, not looking at Stiles. “You're always a jerk. A pain in the ass. Total dick, sometimes. I can deal with all of that. But you _excluded_ me, Stiles.”

Stiles can't look at Derek, won't look at him, so instead he fiddles with his fingers some more, guilt coursing through his veins like a thick gluey poison. “I'm sorry.” He knows he should say more, that he should probably erupt into some Shonda Rhimes monologue that vomits out every single emotion he's feeling and repeats it three times so it's hammered into Derek's brain. But he'd fuck it up if he tried. He's surprised he hasn't fucked it up already, though it's heading in that direction, he thinks.

“You're sorry,” Derek mimics, his voice laden with frustration. 

Now Stiles is looking at Derek, connecting their vision, hopefully displaying more regret and apology with his eyes than he's managing with his words. “Yeah, I'm sorry. I can't say anything else, if you that's you want. And it's not like I can just go back and reverse my douchebagginess.” He throws his hands up into the air, shrugs, then settles them back on his thighs. It's not the most apologetic of manoeuvres, but what else can he do? “So you tell me what you want me to do and I'll do it.”

“Stiles—“

“No, tell me. Anything. You want me to beg? I'll beg. I'll beg for you to come home so we fix all this crap on our own sofa instead of Lydia's because this place kinda creeps me out, Derek, I'm not gonna lie.” It's true: the immaculate organisation of _everything_ makes him feel like he's in a show home with people around the corner waiting to observe them.

Derek's face lets go of the anger, replacing it with something more mellow, maybe even sad, wishful. His eyes rest themselves on Stiles' thigh, then back on his face. “I don't want you to beg.”

“Well what, then? Seriously, I can't do this dancing-around-the-truth thing anymore, dude. It's killin' me.”

“I know.”

“ _So what do you want?_ ”

“For you tell me what's wrong with you,” he blurts out, as though he's keeping the words held back but they managed to break themselves free. 

“I—“ Stiles hovers with his mouth open because he was expecting to have to say something else. But now he's just confused, taken by surprise, so all he can manage is a weak, faint, perplexed “what?”

Derek says nothing, just twitches his brow upwards in his direction, demanding an answer. 

Stiles literally has no idea what to say, because of all the things he envisioned happening, being asked such a question was not one of them. “I'm—there's nothing wrong...with me,” he lies.

Derek still doesn't say anything, but it's not the unpleasant, stifling silence that brings with it hidden malice and anger. No, this time it's different, like a cooling breeze tickling his skin.

He gets up, then sits down next to Stiles on the sofa, their legs touching, their shoulders brushed up against each other, closing the synaptic divide. After three days of having nothing but a squirming ball of fur and a duvet to cradle, having Derek touching his skin again feels like the kiss of summer.

But it comes with it the expectation of truth, Stiles realizes, and it's literally scaring the living bejeebus out of him.

They don't talk at all for the next five minutes, it seems. They just sit there, still touching but silent. Stiles can hear his heart beating in his chest again, because he's become frustratingly self-aware of that lately, but he can hear Derek breathing next to him, slowly and deeply, and as much as he's freaking the fuck out right now, Stiles is taking weird comfort out of it, like it's some kind of yoga exercise. 

After a few more minutes, their continuous lack of conversation gets to be awkward, and suddenly having their skin touching doesn't seem as wonderful as it did before. So Stiles subtly moves to the side a little, then feels the familiar wave of hotness flush over him and the feeling of sand in his lungs again like the day Derek left. 

And he needs to leave. Now.

He goes to stand up and walk away, and it's the worst thing he could do, he realizes, because if he leaves now Derek's never gonna come back to him. But as he's halfway off the sofa, Derek's hand wraps itself around Stiles' wrist and gently pulls him back down, connecting them again.

Stiles can feel it, _something_ , building inside him and he needs to get away so he can breathe, but Derek's stopping him with his body and his hand and his bullshit need to dig into Stiles' soul to pull out the rot that's been festering there.

“Dude, I'm fine, there's nothing wrong with me. Seriously.” Even in his own haziness Stiles can tell the words he's just uttered have as much truth to them as a snowflake falling in Sudan.

But instead of calling him out on his obvious crap, Derek doesn't say anything again. Then a few seconds later, he flatly asks “do you remember your prom night?” and it's the weirdest question he could have ever asked, Stiles thinks.

His face registers obvious bewilderment with every muscle at its disposal. “What?”

“Do you remember—“

“Yeah, I got that. But seriously... _what_?”

Now it's Derek's turn to look like he doesn't know if he should be letting these words loose from his lips. “Remember when I asked you—”

“Yeah, I remember,” Stiles interrupts, confused, because he’ll never forget the question to which Derek's obviously referring—the question that led to their first kiss. It's practically carved into his consciousness. What he doesn’t know is why the heck Derek's talking about this instead of what's right in front of them. “But why? Why are you asking—”

“Just listen.” Stiles watches Derek look at the wall, deep in thought, before returning his gaze to him, so close Stiles almost goes cross-eyed. “Remember how you tried to tell me you weren’t interested? That you were never interested? And then I told you it was horseshit because I _knew_ you?”

“Yeah, but dude—”

“If you interrupt me again I swear I'll gag you.” 

Stiles' eyes playfully widen and he pinches his fingertips together and does the zip-up motion across his lips. And for the briefest of moments, he swears he sees Derek's mouth twitch at the corner, like a smile would grow from there if cultivated. 

“Anyway, now I’m calling horseshit again. Right now. Because I know you’re bullshitting me.” Derek’s hand finds itself on Stiles’ thigh, touching his soul. “Something’s wrong, been wrong for a while. I’m not an idiot.” A brief pause. “Tell me.”

Stiles doesn’t know what to say as he watches the wisp of the interluding relief snake away from him, so he says nothing, instead chooses to fiddle with his hands, run the fingers through each other repeatedly, hoping that Derek will see his unwillingness to rip the mask off, to show him the rotten flesh beneath and send him so far away he becomes a blip on the horizon.

Eventually another hand sits atop his, stopping them, comforting yet demanding, compassionate and terrifying, and so _warm_.

And then Stiles ignores the heaviness in his chest and the pressure growing in his head and finally grips a hold of the band-aid and pulls. 

“Is it me?” He asks, not knowing what else to say that basically summarizes what he’s thinking. 

Derek’s look of incredulity is obvious. “Is what you?”

“Am I the reason—” _Make sense, Stiles. Fucking hell_. “Do you want out, basically?”

“Out of what? Stiles, you’re not making sense.”

“Dude, do you want me to spell it out with fridge magnets? _Do you want out_?”

Derek doesn’t respond, instead electing to fidget next to him, every movement making the leather grinding against his skin squeak and cry. 

“Well?” He finally asks Derek, impatiently, as he feels the first stage of super-ultimate worry setting in.

“You’re unbelievable,” Derek finally responds, lower in volume so that he’s barely audible, shaking his head, though whether out of anger or confusion or some weird mix of both Stiles can’t quite tell. 

He’s made a huge mistake, he thinks. A massive, whopping, freakin’ enormous, fatal mistake and now he can’t take it back. 

“So is that a yes or a no? Kinda important we specify this, Derek.”

“You are, without a doubt, fucking _un-believable_.” He shuffles around, looks utterly pissed, which sends unadulterated fear through Stiles. “You’re annoying, irritating, petulant, like a fucking child, sometimes. And you’re demanding and consistent and terminal. And your eggs taste like coal. Shit.” 

_Oh god, what have I done?_

“So I’m terrible, I got that. But—”

“No, shut up. I’m not done.” Stiles watches as Derek stands up and paces around the room aimlessly, his face registering stuff Stiles can't quit make out in the darkness of their surroundings. It may be dark and Stiles can feel fluid in his eyes again, so his vision's kinda distorted, but he's sure he can see...relief?

Derek sits down next to him again, sighs, probably about to tell him they're done and that he can just go away because he's finally free to go—

He feels Derek's hand on his thigh again, tender and consoling, and _what_? _How_?

Stiles stares at Derek, utterly confused, because Derek should be running right now--running away from him, happiness pouring out of his lungs in high-pitched screams of joy. But instead he's still here, and it makes no sense. 

But no, Derek's staring back at him, a smile beaming its way into Stiles' brain. “Why are you smiling?” Stiles asks him, kinda suspicious that he's being lured into believing all's well again before the rug is yanked from underneath him. 

“Because you're an idiot.”

Stiles narrows his eyes and stares at Derek. “You're smiling because I'm an idiot?”

“Yep.”

Stiles is tempted to slowly stand up and leave because Derek kinda looks homicidal. “Am I dreaming right now? If I slap myself will I wake up?”

Derek laughs now, and this is getting way too creepy too quickly. “You thought that _I_ was gonna leave _you_?” Now he's laughing harder, almost maniacally, and what is even going on? 

“Well duh, that's what I just said.”

Derek quietens down a little, now looking more serious, like he's acknowledged the situation they're actually in. “You're such an idiot. A big fucking idiot.”

“Dude, is this 'insult Stiles Day' because I know I deserve it but come on now.”

Derek grins, mouths “I'm sorry,” takes his hand back from Stiles' thigh and looks longingly at the ground before talking again. “You may be all of those things, and holy shit you’re an ass, but you’re _my_ ass. You’re annoying and immature and fucking relentless but you’re all of those things to _me_.” 

Stiles isn’t looking at Derek, feels too afraid to connect with him in that instance, too consumed by guilt and a burning desire to smash his own wrist into his face over and over again until he bleeds from every orifice. But he feels a hand come up under his chin, forcing his eyes to entwine with Derek's, and then he hears the words he thought were long gone, the words that chill him to the bone with ecstasy. “Where in the hell could I ever find another one of you?”

Stiles doesn’t know what to think, how to think, how to react, what to say, basically anything. Because Derek has just knocked the wind from underneath his wings and sent him soaring towards the ground, back towards reality—back towards the reality he thought had imploded on itself.

“You all right? You’re quiet. You’re never quiet,” Derek finally says with concern after Stiles doesn’t respond because he's too busy running Derek's last words through his brain over and over again at the speed of sound.

“I...I’m fine. I’m just...well, I’m frickin’ surprised.”

“Why?”

“Because you were leaving me. You were gonna run off and find some, I dunno, cute guy with dimples and abs because look, _skinny arms coming through_. And now you’re not and...why?” Now he connects his eyes to Derek’s, stares right into them like a telescope peering past the perimeters of the galaxy.

Derek severs the neural network they’re sharing, stands up, goes to the window, stares for a second into the depth of night outside, then looks back, illuminated by the streetlight like some kind of angelic figure. “Is this what the last few weeks have been about?”

“Hmm?”

“I have noticed, you know. I have eyes. And a brain. You’ve been off for weeks.” He pauses for a second. “Is this why?”

“I guess.”

Incomprehension spreads across Derek's face. “Why would you think I wasn’t interested anymore?”

Stiles tries to think of an answer, which should be easy because he has, like, a mental laundry list of reasons to support his idea that Derek's bored of him. But for some reason, now that he's running through it again, it all sounds so ridiculous.

Stiles looks up at Derek, sees his mouth grow wide, and it's a pity a lightbulb hasn't just appeared over his head because now would be the perfect moment. “This explains it,” Derek finally says.

“Explains what?”

“Why you wanted the cat.”

Stiles goes back to looking at the floor. “Yeah, well that was kinda pointless so feel free to insert your 'I told you so' at any point.”

He senses Derek getting a little closer to him. “Why? I agreed to get the cat, didn’t I?”

Stiles can sense it, the veiled tone in his voice, the ‘ _what more do you want_?’ kind. “I knew it. I _knew_ you didn’t wanna do it.”

“Well, no, I hate cats. And they generally hate me so we’re even.” Derek must sense the absolute confusion that Stiles is displaying because he elaborates. “I thought you knew that?”

“Erm, no, you have _never_ told me that. I’ve got, like, a database of Derek Hale facts in my head and that isn’t in there.” Suddenly he remembers the more important element of what Derek has just said. “Hang on, if you hate cats then why did you agree to it?

“How haven’t you seen this yet? Ugh, you're such a goddamn idiot.” Derek sits back down next to him, gets real close to Stiles, close enough that everything around them fades to black and disappears, like they’re about to perform an important scene in the middle of a play. They’re staring right into each other’s eyes, unflinching, the curtains drawn open at last. “I would do anything for you. Now. Ever. I am here, with you. Get it yet, you fucking dummy? I _love_ you.”

Stiles is waiting for the laughter, waiting for the punchline that follows such a blatant joke designed to lure him in then let him tumble back into the water when he thinks it’s safe to breathe. But it doesn’t come. It doesn’t exist. 

And that, somehow, is far scarier than the alternative. 

He looks down at his legs, afraid to look back up because he can feel the tears streaming down his face again. How could he have been so blind? So ignorant and paranoid and stupid to the degree that he created this whole other world for himself, one that almost didn't involve Derek. 

It's like a cloud has been covering his brain for weeks, and now it's just floating away, finally clearing the air so he can breathe and see properly again. And even though he still can't quite believe what Derek's just said, that he's not bored and not leaving him and that he's _in love_ with him, it doesn't feel like an outright lie anymore. It doesn't feel like he has a devil sitting atop his shoulder bleeding toxins into his ear. 

No, now it feels...normal. 

Real.

And with that feeling inevitably comes with it the pain of what he almost did, of what he almost lost—and it's devastating in every way. “I’m sorry. You're right, I'm a fucking idiot. Seriously, put that on my tombstone or something when I’m dead. I mean it,” he finally responds, taking a hold of Derek’s hand inside his own, entwining their fingers, stroking his thumb up and down the surface, almost like he’s trying to see if the paint will flake away and reveal all of this to be some complex dream because he _still_ can’t quite believe what his eyes and ears are telling him. 

But he’s awake. He’s finally awake. He’s finally _alive_ again. 

He looks up at Derek's face, matches his smile with one of his own, doesn't know which words to say so he just blurts out what's sitting on the fringe of his thoughts, each one croaky and tainted by tears. “And you’re totally right, by the way: I am irreplaceable. I’m a frickin’ Beyonce song!”

“You’re damn right,” Derek beams, stroking the back of his hand gently down Stiles' cheek, his finger cutting off the trail of a tear winding down his face. Stiles loves the feel of it, the warmth heating the cold, the cartoon angel decapitating the devil with its halo.

Because he really does feel it. He feels it in his chest, in his mind, in his heart, even in his dick. It’s euphoric and real, relief and realization, all at the same time.

It’s happiness. 

Derek curls his hand around Stiles’ neck, pulls them both together so their lips can meet, so their tongues can collide, so their teeth can awkwardly crash together, so they can moan into each other's mouths. And Stiles feels every movement, every touch sending electricity throughout his body, jolting back to life atrophied images of their future together. 

He feels like he’s the Doctor, regenerating back from the dead. 

And honestly? _This_ is the best feeling he’s ever experienced. 

~~~~~~~

“ **tapped dat ass last night, 7/10, a little tired and cranky, would still recommend #TheMorningAfter.** ” Stiles hits send on the tweet as he lays in bed next to Derek, waiting for him to wake up so he can spring the surprise on him. And it will be a surprise, because Stiles, like, NEVER makes breakfast in bed. Like ever. It’s just not his thing and never will be. 

But after what nearly happened, after what _he_ nearly made happen, and after miraculously managing to reverse the damage in the last few days, it's the least he can do.

Stiles chucks his phone on the bedside table, makes sure to turn the sound off before the collective thirst of everyone following him bleeds through into their bedroom to join the relaxed, almost sensual sound of birds awakening from slumber outside.

He rolls over, decides to get himself real close to Derek, feels the heat radiating off his body and spreading into his like they’ve broken the laws of physics, two objects occupying the same space. 

He kisses Derek’s back, over and over again, top to bottom, secretly hoping it rouses him from his sleep so he can stare into his eyes and feel the magnetic pull bringing them together, not pushing them away again.

He lies flat on his back, disconnected from Derek's skin, feels the warmth return to its owner, and waits. Waits for Derek, for him to wake up so he can show him that he's capable of being a good boyfriend and not a jerk.

Stiles feels a presence at the end of the bed, looks up, and sees Mister Kittypants creeping towards them, his green eyes sparkling in the beams of daylight penetrating the curtains. 

“Morning, good sir,” Stiles whispers as he tickles the little guy under his head, which he loves. 

Weirdly, the cat, which is basically infatuated with Stiles, ignores him and heads straight for Derek, as though he can sense the residual discourse in the air and wants to rectify it the best way he can—with nibbles, purring, and general overdoses of cute. 

First he heads for Derek’s face, sniffs a few times, puts his paw on top of his nose and maybe plays with it a little. Then he has like a spasm or something and starts nibbling Derek’s beard again, then his hair and, yep, he’s sitting on Derek’s head. _ON HIS HEAD_. Meowing, purring, sniffing, but there he is, sitting on his head like it’s some kind of kitty throne. 

Stiles finds it hilarious, laughs to himself so hard that he can’t contain the volume as much as he wants to and erupts like Vesuvius. And holy shit holy shit, how has it only just occurred to him right now to take a picture of this?

He makes a grab for his phone like it’s a hand grenade he needs to put the pin back into before it detonates, gets to the camera, takes the _perfect_ Derek Hale candid and ponders what to do with it before he hears a groggy voice from beside him. “Stiles...stop it. I’m tired.” Derek’s hand comes up, brushes over his head to push away the non-existent hand that’s disrupting his beauty sleep.

Stiles chokes on his amusement, has to bite his lip so he doesn’t become jerk boyfriend again, but he can’t. This shit is definitely going on twitter and tumblr and every single social network on the planet, ass or no ass. 

The cat freaks out when Stiles wiggles his finger teasingly above Derek’s hair, tries to grab it but instead grabs clumps of hair, making Derek groan and shuffle around. 

“Would you quit it already? God-fucking-damn,” Derek says, his hand coming up again but reaching the true culprit this time. “What the—” He twists his head around, sees the cat, scowls like you wouldn’t believe, and _oh my god this is fucking EVERYTHING_. 

“He just wanted to say good morning to you.” Stiles strokes Kittypants’ head, laughs like an idiot when it ignores him and makes a grab for Derek’s face with both paws like he’s actually been possessed or something. “Oh my god, if you could see your face right now, dude.”

Derek pushes the cat off, whines when it doesn’t seem to dissuade the little guy from making another attempt merely seconds later.. “Did you put sugar in his milk or something? Jesus Christ.”

“He just likes you.”

“Plenty of people like me but they don’t play with my fucking hair at”—Derek looks at the clock, sighs—“yep, seven o’clock.”

“Maybe he just wants you to get up.”

“Or maybe he’s just copying asshole behavior from you.”

He playfully punches Derek in the shoulder. “We're both assholes here so it's your fault just as much as mine.” He sits upright. “Anyway, do you want breakfast? Y’know, seeing as you’re awake and all.”

Derek sniggers, looks at him with a truly disbelieving look, like Stiles has just confessed to being a monkey or something. “You? Cook breakfast?” A pause. “You?”

“I can cook, you know.”

“Boiling an egg is _not_ cooking.”

“Fuck you, I have kitchen skills, I just don’t show them often is all.”

Derek grin, sits up in bed, moving Kittypants off of his throne. “This I have _got_ to see.”

A challenge. Stiles likes challenges. “Just you wait, I’ll fucking _dazzle bejazzle_ you with my cooking.”

Stiles almost gets up out of bed before kissing Derek on the side of his face, which must come as a surprise because Derek raises an eye for a split second upon receiving it. He narrows his eyes at Stiles just slightly. “You seem cheery this morning.” His eyes get even narrower. “What are you up to?”

Stiles scoots his legs over the edge of the bed, slaps his palm down on Derek's thigh just once. “Course I am, I've got both of my boys.” He sees Derek smile in response before he forces his whole body into the cold air of the bedroom and heads towards the kitchen.

Now, what can he make Derek for breakfast, Stiles wonders as he rummages through the fridge, taking stuff out, smelling it, contemplating. Despite what he told Derek, Stiles really doesn’t have a single bone in his body that’s cut out for making one food stuff from several food stuffs. Basically, the only creativity he’s willing to display when it comes to food is which pizza topping combinations work with which cheese type, and even that’s a struggle because what does pineapple go with, really?

Suddenly he has an idea: he saw an app once that takes all the ingredients you have and tells you what you can make out of it. So he tries that, puts in a whole bunch of ingredients, and when it suggests making an omelette, he deletes the stupid thing because it just doesn’t understand him at all. 

Whatever, he's just gonna make eggs. They'll probably turn out like shit but it's the effort that counts, right?

A few minutes later, the eggs gently sizzling in the pan, Stiles hears a voice from the bedroom. “Do you need a ha—” He hears a weird sound, almost like someone taking a sharp intake of air through their teeth. “The fuck?”

Stiles giggles to himself at what he thinks has just happened, flips the egg over. “You okay, dude?”

“No, get me a band-aid.”

He searches through the medicine cabinet for a band-aid, finds one, leaves the eggs to cook themselves for a second, and heads into the bedroom. 

Derek’s sitting upright in bed, the finger and thumb of one his hands pinching a wound on the other, while Kittypants sits next to him, innocently staring at his victim but unrepentant. _God he’s learning fast_. 

“What happened?” Stiles asks, genuinely concerned until he sees blood all over the sheets. “Oh come the crap on, did you have to bleed everywhere?”

“This...thing...grabbed my finger, wouldn’t let go.” Derek takes the band-aid from Stiles, wraps it around his fingertip. “When are you gonna get around to trimming its claws?”

“Why do I have to be the one who does it?”

Derek gestures towards the blood all over the sheets with his hands. “I think it might object less to you doing it. Just a hunch.”

He's about to say something back before he thinks he can smell smoke from the other room and rushes back to the eggs, gets there just in time to prevent them from becoming charcoal. 

And while he's waiting, listening to the crackling sound of his food being prepared in front of him, listening to the bell on Kittypants' collar jingling all over the bedroom, he smiles to himself. Just slightly, like he can't even stop himself. Because this is so...normal. This is what it used to be like before, what he thought he would never be able to have again and yet here it is, swirling around him, blowing all the dust off of him and carrying it elsewhere. 

He used to think that happiness was a fable, a fictional construction only attainable in make-believe worlds. But it's not. He can _feel_ it, right there inside him, and he wonders if Derek can feel it too, whether it's changing him as much as it's changing Stiles. 

It takes him a moment to realize he's been staring into space for several minutes, and in that time the eggs being cooked in front of him have gone from looking slightly edible to, well, definitely overcooked. But whatever, he's too enwrapped by this feeling to care, so he just empties the contents onto a plate, ready to be served.

Stiles shuffles back into the bedroom, puts the plate down on top of Derek’s lap and realizes in that moment that wow, he sucks at presentation. Derek seems to notice it too. 

“We can definitely strike an eye for design off your list of talents. Jesus.”

Stiles doesn’t say anything, doesn't need to because it's true, so he just crawls back into bed beside Derek, watching as the shitty eggs he just made are poked and prodded, examined to determine whether they’re actually edible. 

Surprisingly they pass the test and Derek starts eating. “You not hungry?” he says, a mouthful of food muffling his words. 

“You look at those eggs and tell me whether you'd be hungry after that.”

Derek breaths a visible sigh of relief and puts the plate down beside him. “I'm so glad I don't have to pretend.”

“You were right, I basically have the culinary skills of a chimp.” He feels upset with himself that he can't even do something as simple as cook fucking eggs without screwing it up, because yeah, Derek's here with him and he's not going away, but he'd still like to be able to display some degree of self-sufficiency. 

“Why do you think I do all the cooking around this place?” Derek smiles, leans over and kisses him on the lips, just once, hovers his face just in front of Stiles', says “I appreciate the effort, though,” every syllable blowing warm air onto Stiles' face. 

Stiles and Derek finally separate, the latter getting out of bed again, grabbing the dish from the side of the bed, turning his nose up at it. He makes a beeline for the kitchen. “Now it’s my turn to make you food. Yeah, _food_. That you can actually eat.”

Stiles smirks, grabs a pillow from beside him and hurls it at Derek, instead watching as it lands on top of the cat and sends it scurrying off into the other room to irritate the shit out of Derek while he cooks. 

He lays back down, wraps the sheets around him and just stares at the ceiling while he listens to the sound of cupboard doors opening and closing. 

_Well done, Stiles. You exceeded the limits of your own absolute dumbassery with that one. Good job, bro. You almost blew it_ , he thinks to himself, unable to let go of where he was a week ago, but so, so happy he's not there anymore. 

But he can’t listen to his regret for long because Derek calls out from the kitchen. “Hey, I’ve got an idea.”

Stiles sits up on his elbows, watches as Derek comes back into the bedroom with an innocent expression on his face and, yep, his little (no, big, holy shit big) friend swaying to and fro between his legs. 

“I’ve told you, Derek, I’m not letting you film us. It’s freakin’ weird and nobody wants to see some skinny white dude in a porno,” Stiles says as Derek stands there, holding a bowl underneath one arm, circling a spoon around with the other. 

“That wasn’t what I was gonna say. Though I still think—”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Okay okay.” He rolls his eyes, stops circling the spoon, lets it drop down inside the bowl. “Anyway, I was thinking I’d help you out a bit.”

“With what?”

“With this.” He stands with his legs apart, runs his hips in a complete 360 degree circle so his dick follows the same motion. “Take a picture of this and it’ll double, no, _triple_ , your retweets.”

Stiles' mouth drops, his eyebrows following the same direction. “You motherfucker! You knew about it the whole time?”

“Of course I did.” Stiles sees a wry smile pass across Derek’s lips. “You think ten thousand people are gonna be worshipping my ass and I’m not gonna know about it?” He turns around, bends right down so his hole is right on display like a goddamn monument. "You want the asshole shot?”

Stiles laughs, picks up another cushion, throws it across the room to hit Derek’s ass but he senses it and dodges, laughing loudly as he walks back into the kitchen, his cheeks looking especially proud of themselves as they leave his view. 

Stiles lies back down, stares back at the ceiling again. He feels the kitten hop up on the bed next to him, but instead of playing or chewing his hair or any of the other weird shit he likes to do, he curls up next to Stiles’ arm, like everything is just perfect and the way it’s supposed to be. It’s almost surreal.

He feels like he’s woken up from a dream but he’s still in that half-awake-half-asleep limbo period where reality and fiction bleed into each other. But he’s there, in that moment, staring up at the blank white above him, feeling it surround him. But he’s not passing into the afterlife or anything like that. No, he isn't dead. In fact he feels more alive than he's ever felt. 

And yeah, everything you have can burn to ashes in just three days, but as it turns out, three days is all you need to build something better.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey so I'm on Tumblr and Twitter, so let's be friends, maybe? It's totally up to you. But I offer much in the way of internet lovin'...
> 
> Tumblr: this-makes-sense.tumblr.com  
> Twitter: @steosphere


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